On their third album No One Can Ever Know…, Scottish indie rockers the Twilight Sad tunnel further into the psychic muck that they have made their own, a poisoned world of abused trust and defiled innocence. As with their previous work, particularly their astonishing debut, the album’s lyrics often hint at that darkest of

During the big dance boom of the early ’90s, a prejudicial theory floated around that went a bit “well it’s all going to sound dated in few years, isn’t it?”. There was, and to some extent still is, a lingering idea that dance music is somehow disposable, has a sell by date, whereas rock and…

Oh Noel G, we expected something more interesting than this. Freed from the constraints of the allegedly bullish retromania of Gallagher junior, and talking up his forthcoming psychedelic long-player with the amazingly ridiculously monikered Amorphous Androgynous (a collaboration with former members of Future Sounds of London), there was an ember of hope that Noel had…

On Future Islands’ second album In Evening Air…, songwriter and lead vocalist Sam Herring created a break-up album that was simultaneously vicious and exquisite. Riding crest upon crest of aching synths, he yelped, growled, and barked his way through tale after tale of utter heartbreak and dejection. It was quite a spectacle, and if

To say The Waterboys’ latest album, An Appointment With Mr. Yeats…, is a labour of love of sorts for Mike Scott would be something of an understatement. Scott’s obsession with W.B. Yeats is evident in a catalogue of lyrics peppered with direct or indirect nods to a burning, galloping Celtic mysticism that is typical

In a Dublin music scene that is positively bubbling with lo-fidelity indie pop and rock, Cian Nugent’s Doubles… stands out in a sort of solitary and lonely way. It is a brooding and cinematic steel guitar LP played in a high style that will be familiar to followers of Jim O’Rourke and Loren Connors. The

Chaz Bundick’s debut album Causers of This… was one of a handful of rinsed-out sets from aesthically similar indie/electronic musicians lumped together as ‘chillwave’, the joke-genre that for better or worse became an actual genre. Like contemporaries Neon Indian and Memory Tapes, his music was prettily lit, amorphous, nostalgic but also a little too insubstantial.

As the ’80s turned into the ’90s, and acid house or grunge troubled the airwaves depending on what side of the Atlantic you lived on, a young Harvard educated band flared incandescently for a few short years. They released a handful of albums (containing at least one stone-cold classic), of which none sold that well…

The Back Loft Studios, where Dublin troubadour Owensie launches his debut solo album, is a curious place. It’s a large barn-shaped church loft, with all sorts of little back passages and alcoves decorated with art by various collectives. The toilets are even curiouser – ancient with seats stuffed with escaping foam and cracked linoleum of…

In the unlikely event that a prize was given to the band who managed best to alienate an adoring fanbase, then surely that prize belongs to Weezer. The slow, ugly, and bizarre process of attrition through which they flipped the bird to said fans is a breathtaking exercise in cynicism; and actually quite spectacular in…

Just after the interval of this special event to mark Science week, the veteran Irish broadcaster and space expert Leo Enright emerged on stage to give a brief history of Irish involvement in the Apollo space programme. With his professorial demeanour, he gave proceedings a slight flavour of a university lecture. This was no bad…

Majesty Shredding… lands a full nine years since Superchunk last riffed out in that inimitable rough yet melodic way of theirs on Here’s to Shutting Up. In the meantime, band members Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance managed a roster of great and good indie artists on their influential label, Merge – so it’s not like

When dubstep emerged, all red-eyed and moody, from the darkest bowels of dance a few years ago, the thought that the genre might end up flirting with the deliberate naivety of chiptune and the smiley faced escapades of acid and hardcore would have seemed about as likely as a karaoke duet between Darth Vader and…

Malachai are a duo; a surname less duo called -Gee’ and -Scott’ no less. This is a fact that needs asserting from the get go, because one of the first impressions that this marvellously bonkers jumble-sale of an album will leave on anyone is how unlikely it seems that a couple of dudes can be…