Single of the Week…
Junior Boys – ‘Banana Ripple’ (Domino)
MMMMM. Just what we need in these unseasonably pleasant days, a new deliciously sweet sounding tune from those beardy bop-merchants Junior Boys. This tune has the potential to be the summer ‘sneaker-upper’, a song that seems to lack the instantaneous knock-down effect but then manages

Single of the Week…
Lady Gaga – Judas (Interscope Records)
So this is what it feels like to be beaten about the face repeatedly with a leather-studded crucifix (if such a thing does not exist it will by the time the video has wrapped). Thank Easter it’s Gaga! Having already exhausted the egg motif months

Apparently a concept album about sexy happenings and with a title that’s like porn Blankety Blank… these Oklahoma racket makers are not for the prudish. No wonder Wayne Coyne, a man who litters his Twitter (not a euphemism) with pictures of his naked wife, is a fan….the saucepot.
These kinky goings on are not the

Single of the Week
Fever Ray – ‘The Wolf’ (Rabid Records)
Beginning with a brown-note siren hum reminiscent of the bit in Carrie… where she eyeballs everyone before seeking her neck crushing revenge on prom night ,you know this is going to be a peep-from-behind-the-couch kind of song. Howling repeatedly like a lupine banshee, she

It is strangely fitting and rather comforting that on the day when diva extraordinaire Liz Taylor exits stage left, leaving the last vestiges of old school mystique, charisma and dubious hair-dos behind her, that we gather to watch the Trojan show pony that is Kylie Minogue attempting to unite Dublin in a festival of ludicrous…

Beyond his whimsical, anarchic streak Gruff Rhys has always been a songwriter of unnerving excellence. From his 15 years with Super Furry Animals, his stint with Neon Neon, his guest spots with everyone from Mogwai to Simian Mobile Disco; he has brought his razor sharp vision and magnetic quality for melody to all. If the…

In this bizarre musical landscape that has given us a league of eyelash batters, banjo breakdowns and gushing folksy ‘wisdom’ it’s hard to imagine any artist being truly capable of conjuring up tunes of a sweet nature that are not cloying, semi-religious or down right embarrassing.
Thankfully two stalwarts of melody drenched pop Euros Childs…

Arriving onstage to the strains of the most ridiculous, bombastic introduction music since Julie Andrews twirled around on a mountain top, Queen Elton bows taking his applause before turning to show off his jacket, a bedazzled affair depicting young Elt climbing out of the jaws of a crocodile, as entrances go it’s hardly subtle, he…

As Victoria Legrande leans over her boxy, oddly antiquated keyboard, giant Kate Bush style tendrils flailing around her face, legs akimbo, hands craning skywards, she commands the stage and exudes the intense, magnetic charisma of a dust bowl preacher. Her dusky vocals booming out from the darkness, the voice of a forgotten godhead pealing into…

The title of reluctant solo artist may have suited Gruff Rhys once. Having negotiated nearly 10 albums worth of high times and psych-pop brilliance with Super Furry Animals he embarked on a one man outing in 2003 only to declare that he wanted to be the first solo artist to ‘split up’. Now seven years…

Before Britpop became a grim cockney knees up, a pathetic class pantomime draped in a flag that polarised rather than unified, there was the spark that ignited it all, the caustic cousin that viewed the party they effectively began from in the shadowy corner with arch disdain. Before it all became so monosyllabic and mono-browed,…

Friday night in Dublin, the closing night of Lady Gaga’s three night stand of her epic ’Monster’s Ball’ tour and surely the O2 is not about to let the bewigged one go out with a whimper not a bang? Yet sadly there was nary a sausage tiara to be seen, apart from a few Gaga-a-likes…

When the Manic Street Preachers left the Olympia stage in June last year, James Dean Bradfield uttering an elegiac oath about not letting the past diminish the present and the giant backdrop of Jenny Saville’s tormented child’s eyes staring back at us, it seemed clear that the sheer emotional weight of the Journal For Plague …

It seems you can’t swing a wheelie-binned cat these days without hitting some pointy boots and bulb shades wearing troupe of wannabe Syd Barretts back combing their barnets and peddling their drawling neo psych ‘sounds’ to anyone who’ll stay awake long enough to listen. Heck, if even Cut Copy have ditched the samplers to basically…