..

Foo Fighters – Main Stage
Rock and roll legends don’t come much more ‘larger than life’ than Dave Grohl. Growling, flicking his mane back and forth and firing his way through a frantic selection of Foo Fighters classics, the front man is on absolutely top form. His early set promise to “play until we’re asked…

..

Peter Hook – Heineken Green Spheres
Peter Hook and The Light are simple and traditional in the way the present a rock show. Strumming against a backdrop of a run-of-the-mill light show and focusing heavily on their big-name frontman, the group’s celebration of Joy Division – who came to their tragic end just over 21…

The Strokes – Vodafone Stage
Latest album Angles… might have been met with less than critical adoration, but that certainly hasn’t affected The Strokes live show. Bracketed by a stark yet beautiful stage set up consisting of lit up chevrons(angles, presumably?) and a pixelated screen that channels ’80s video games, Casablancas and co. are in

Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Main Stage
Huey Morgan is one smooth, smooth man. The first main stage act of Oxegen Festival 2011’s front man can entertain an entire field of people with nothing more than some comic on-screen facial expressions. Of course, Fun Lovin’ Criminals are about far more than that, and their eclectic take…

This might very well have been Janelle Monae’s most significant week in Europe since the release of debut album, The Archandroid…. A stunning performance on the West Holts stage at Glastonbury saw her sales on Amazon UK rise by just under 5,000% (a multiple of seven, incidentally, of the increase Beyonce pulled off through her

Released in 1971, Marvin Gaye’s 11th studio album is widely seen as the shy soul singer’s seminal effort. As the first album he ever produced alone, it’s one of a spate of early ’70s anti-war albums, and one of the very first to reach a sizable household audience. Originally a mere nine tracks of classic…

It’s been a fine year for Dubliners Sounds Of System Breakdown. Their self-titled debut won plenty of interest, seeing the electro-rockers rise to the top end of many of Ireland’s smaller festival bills and even win a ranking position on State’s albums of 2010. An emotive performance on the main stage of Vantastival – during…

I wasn’t a cool teenager. I took my A-levels at one of those intensely conservative UK ‘grammar schools’, a place where late teens are forced to wear a suited uniform that prepares them for their anticipated future as the nation’s politicians, insurance salesman and – heaven forbid – bankers. We lived in a fiercely white,…

Released way back in 1979, Pink Floyd’s The Wall…, is an undeniably significant piece of modern music history. State was a mere glint in the milkman’s eye back then, and still more interested in Lego and Boy Scouts when its seminal performance – the incredibly poignant 1990 celebration in Berlin – came around. We

Roddy Woomble has changed a great deal since the early days of Idlewild. Having watched one of the band’s final pre-hiatus shows back in May 2010, there was a real sense that the band were reaching backwards to find their heavier moments: a melancholy had descended, and the anger of the 100 Broken Windows…/

Since 2009, Kurt Nikolaisen and a close-knit group of his friends have been storming Dublin with that most traditional of cultural pastimes: musical activism. Love Music Hate Racism has grown from inconspicuous roots, establishing itself as a regular Dublin gig night, getting involved in Electric Picnic and putting on plenty of top local – and…

Pigeon Detectives ‘Yorkshire’ sound was already getting a touch dated when they first exploded onto the scene in 2007, with simplistically catchy UK-Platinum-selling debut Wait For Me. Follow up Emergency still managed gold status, but was widely critically derided. Up Guards And At ‘Em…, which comes nearly three years after their last album,