Expectations are high. The Middle East have, seemingly without anyone noticing, gathered enough of a following to sell out tonight’s date in The Sugar Club, apparently as much to their surprise as to ours. Anyone who’s there will have heard that the band put on a cracking live show, their set at SXSW being mentioned…

Having already conquered hearts and minds across Ireland with his previous visits, Owen Pallett returns to Dublin this week to remind us how phenomenal he is. His new album, Heartland, is a spectacular achievement, the finest thing he’s done yet. Live, he’s a revelation, forcing you to forget whatever you thought you knew about solo…

So, here we are. This is Joanna Newsom’s third album, and as Joanna Newsom albums go, it’s almost normal. That is to say, there’s some four minute songs, and there’s some relatively low-key pop songs, and there’s really only a handful of tracks that near the ten-minute mark. Maybe the only conceit here is that…

There are a couple of good reasons why Owen Pallett isn’t one of the most popular artists in the world. His former moniker, Final Fantasy, rendered him a little un-Googleable, and marked him as overly nerdy from the outset. He titled his last record He Poos Clouds…. And up until now, his output has

Before starting work on their debut album, Fanfarlo released several low-key singles, treading the familiar path of many modern indie bands and building a small but devoted fanbase before they even had an album. Their early releases had many bloggers in a tizzy – as well they might, what with the combination of violin, guitar,…

Things have changed in Owen Ashworth’s world. The low-tech joy of beeping keyboards that his listeners are familiar with are absent from his latest release, replaced by the fuller sound of pianos, mellotrons and organs. As if to signify this, the record opens with a cascade of rolling harps, different samples melded together into a…

Grizzly Bear’s last record, the phenomenal Yellow House…, was built as much on its unique atmosphere and production as it was on fine songwriting. The expansive and distant aesthetic gave the songs a genuine setting, and brought them to life in the titular house where they were recorded. It worked best as a slow

This debut has been a long time coming. David Stith first started on the path that would lead to Heavy Ghost… when he made his way to New York, and found himself helping his new friend Shara record what would become My Brightest Diamond’s debut. It wasn’t long before he was snapped up by her

Six years on since her first release, a lot of things have changed for Cathy Davey. She’s no longer signed to a major label, having been dropped by Parlophone as they shook their roster up. She’s won a Meteor Award, and the praise of many journalists at home. And she’s become a regular fixture on…

(Tomlab)
Three years in the making, Entanglements… is an album brimming with inventiveness and confidence, and while it is unmistakably a Parenthetical Girls record, it’s unlike anything they’ve done before. Gone are the little songs capturing uncomfortable bedroom moments, to be replaced by pieces like -Gut Symmetries’, chronicling doomed romances with older lovers. Where previously

White Denim’s first full-length is a package composed of their two self-released EPs that brought them such sudden acclaim, along with some new material. It’s a glorious mess of a record. These songs simply shouldn’t fit together as well as they do, with the knocked-about punk of the opening tracks leading naturally to the melodic…