Articles by Sophie Elizabeth Smith
The White Stripes – Under Great Northern Lights
Emmett Malloy proffers a beguiling glimpse into the machinations of the ever-enigmatic, blues-inflected figureheads of the garage rock revival with Under Great White Northern Lights, a rock documentary that charts the White Stripes’ tour across Canada in the summer of 2007. Stopping in every territorial province and finishing with a tenth anniversary show in…
Meteor Awards – No Fun(derland)
America have the Grammy Awards, Canada the Juno Awards and the United Kingdom the Brits; all a blend of live performances and award presentations that serve to highlight and commend the outstanding artistic achievements within the music industry over the past year. Considering the prestige and credibility that is associated with the previously mentioned…
Adam Green – The Academy 2, Dublin
Perusing Adam Green’s blog, and considering the outlandish lyricism of his six solo albums, it isn’t difficult to discern that he is a thoroughly off-kilter character. Ascending the stage in the Academy 2, the self-confessed “macho rock and roll singer” who orders “pizzas in my mind”, resplendent in a studded leather biker jacket and…
Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains
Nearly every artist of reasonable ability and young age in the history of the popular music canon has, in all probability, been labeled a ‘precocious talent’, an appellation used so blithely that anyone from the relentless ‘um-boppers’ Hanson to Miley Cyrus has, at one point, huddled together under the umbrella term.
Yet, every so…
Passion Pit, The Academy, Dublin
The tale of the inception of Passion Pit treads the infinitely fine line between heart-swellingly romantic and sickeningly schmaltzy, depending on how sweet a tooth you have. Michael Angelakos was once a one man laptop show playing a collection of songs that together comprised a belated Valentine’s Day present for his girlfriend. Three band…
Alexandra Burke – Overcome
Since the inception of television music talent shows, singing stars that were once-glittering have consistently suffered from the fickle fancies of their audiences, now nothing more than the subject of blithe questions on Yahoo! Answers: “whatever happened to Michelle McMammoth? Didn’t she win that pop programme?? I really miss her amazing talent.” Surely this…
Nirvana – Bleach (deluxe edition)
Contrary to popular assumption, there was life before Nevermind. It consisted of a meagre $606.17 recording budget, and a rough, raging, rebellious statement of intent. It’s the album that was initially regarded as an amateurish, coarse precursor to what is a seminal popularisation of the Seattle grunge movement. Now, twenty years on and with…
Girls – Album
Brought up within the polyamorous Children of God cult, Christopher Owens, lead singer of Girls, travelled with his mother and two sisters through Puerto Rico, Asia and Europe. There, he played guitar on the streets until he had saved up enough money to buy a plane ticket to America, and broke free of the…
Pixie Lott – Turn It Up
You know you’ve made it when you’re asked to record one of your hit songs in Simlish for The Sims 3 soundtrack and The Daily Mail makes a headline story out of you enjoying a midnight snack at Nando’s. It’s not exactly a hindrance if you look like the lovechild of Brigitte Bardot and…
CODES – Trees Dream In Algebra
The critical theory of Post-Modernism includes the idea that nothing in the world can be new or innovative, because everything has happened already. So, according to Post-Modernism, musical trends and genres are reused, and sometimes reinvented until they are barely recognisable, brilliant homages to a sonic era bygone. It would seem then, that CODES…
YACHT- See Mystery Lights
There “exists” in the world, many fantastical things that sometimes, you can’t help wishing were real; Unicorns. Lightsabers. Fairy dust. Yet taking the title of his 2007 record I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real, as his ethos, and telling himself “you’re a wizard Jona”, Jona Bechtolt, the patriarch of YACHT (Young Americans…
Jon Hughes – Voices From A Broken Window
The tune of the Irish singer-songwriter has been well and tritely versed, and strummed out on Glen Hansard’s knackered acoustic guitar with a hole in the body and minus a string. Yet, can Jon Hughes manage to deliver an album worthy of counting him amongst the abundance of merits attributed to Galway (The Saw…
Theoretical Girl – Divided
It would appear that prior to writing her debut album, Theoretical Girl [aka Amy Eleanor Turnnidge] was dumped, consequently locked herself in her bedroom and listened to The Carpenters on repeat. Divided is the culmination of such heartsickness, baroque and dole. Turnnidge started making demos on a 4-track [presumably in her bedroom] in 2005,…
