Something weird happened as I was reading this book: I began to kind of loathe grunge.
I wasn’t expecting that. I’m usually impressionable in the opposite direction: well-crafted musical histories leave me unreasonably enthused about their subjects. After Please Kill Me…, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s uproarious account of New York punk, I listened

Iceland’s Jóhann Jóhannsson has, at least since 2006’s IBM 1401: A User’s Manual…, been one of the most interesting and productive of a loosely affiliated group of “post-classical” composers and musicians, which includes Peter Broderick, Max Richter, and Sylvain Chauveau. In as much as post-classical means anything, it is that the work of Jóhannsson

A reporter once remarked to Bob Dylan that she had enjoyed Blood on the Tracks…, the 1975 album constructed from the wreckage of the end of his marriage. Bob, irritatingly unwilling to accept a compliment, replied “A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that,

“Funny Tragic. It’s my own genre!”
Released just three years ago, Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut album quickly became a modern classic. On April 1st, Ezra Koenig’s precocious magnum opus is due for a distinct and idiosyncratic tribute when Neil Hannon and a specially assembled supergroup play the album in its entirety in the Button Factory.…

In 2006, one of the more remarkable stories in Irish music began when Dundalk residents Eamonn Quinn and his wife Gemma Murray had a baby and found that they couldn’t get up to the city for concerts as often as before. Rather than do what a couple in that situation might reasonably do – stay…

He began the show by saying “Thank you for not forgetting about me” and if Jens Lekman’s songs had somewhat slipped our mind at the start of this show, they were firmly re-ensconsed by the end.
Before Lekman arrived onstage there was the odd quasi-performance art of The Blow, in the form of Mikhaela Maricich,…

Teenage Fanclub are among the most effortlessly and unassumingly brilliant of all bands. Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley and Gerry Love may not be the lightning rods for melody that they were ten to fifteen years ago; still, -Baby Lee’, -Dark Clouds’ and about half of the just-released Shadows… suggest that they still exhale three-part harmony

In 2003, shortly before he died, the activist and critic Edward Said published On Late Style…, an examination of the late works of towering figures in the arts, like Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, and the mercurial genius pianist Glenn Gould. Said was interested in commonalities between the late works of artists across disciplines: how did

Alex Chilton, who led Big Star in making three of the most unbelievably beautiful albums in rock’n’roll history, died on March 17th in New Orleans. He died of a heart attack, at 59.
It is hard to overstate his stature, or that of the band he founded in Memphis in 1971 with Andy Hummel, Jody…

Anyone who has any love for any tiny fraction of the millions of hours of pop music that has come out since 1970 has to have a tricky relationship with The Beatles. The Clash’s staggeringly incorrect prediction that ‘phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust’ was an early expression of this; another was the Sex Pistols’…

Early this month, the oracles at the Irish Times listed their ’50 best music acts right now’, so that we would all know who to like, at least until their next list. And in amidst the nostalgic wishful thinking (Ash) and premature overpraising (Villagers), there were a few genuine results: notably, Adrian Crowley carded a…

Hauschka, no relation to the skin care guy at the bottom of the escalator in Brown Thomas, is Volker Bertelmann, a Düsseldorf-based keyboardist, arranger and serial piano dismantler. His instrument is the prepared piano. Judging by a graphic on his website, and by the sounds of three albums including Snowflakes and Carwrecks…, a prepared

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, a 29-year-old from Rathfarnham with a degree in physics who once helped construct a Namibian cheetah sanctuary, is best thought of as an independent and original musician, specialising in the fiddle and Hardanger violin, whose roots are in traditional Irish music. To call him a traditional musician doesn’t quite do justice to…

A few words on the nature of second-album disappointment. When a band you were amazed you liked in the first place puts out a long-awaited follow-up that you can’t imagine ever wanting to listen to after you’ve finally forced yourself to review it, can that be called a disappointment? You’re just back where you started,…