Music
Festival Line-ups
Summer 2017 is set to be an unforgettable festival extravaganza. It’s time to dust off your sunnies, buy some hunzo shorts in Penneys and grab a few Tesco cans. As festival season approaches more and Read more…
Music
Music
The Sheer’ madness of the singles chart
Turn on the radio, tap open Spotify or flick on the telly- the world has lost its mind once again for the uber successful Ed Sheeran. Having released his third studio album, ‘Divide’, the 26-year Read more…
Music
Review – Lukas Graham at the Olympia
Lukas Graham are a pop and soul band from Denmark, but they have Irish roots, making their concert in Dublin extra special. From beginning to end the band engaged with the crowd as if they Read more…
Music
Dublin dreams for Galway’s LAOISE
When we think of singer/songwriters with around 11,000 monthly listeners on Spotify we tend not to imagine 20-year-olds still studying in college. LAOISE isn’t like most 20 year olds. Sitting in a quirky city-centre café, Read more…
Music
Skepta and Stormzy – leading Grime’s renaissance
When one hears the word grime, we immediately think of Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Lethal Bizzle – the usual suspects. However, anyone thinking the original prophets of British grime will bring the genre to the Read more…
Music
How Overhead, The Albatross made a Choice-nominated album
There’s a soft laugh over the phone. “Yeah, I guess we’re perfectionists in one way,” Stevie Darragh of Overhead, The Albatross tells me. That much is clear. It’s that perfectionism that allowed the Dublin instrumentalists Read more…
Music
The Band/Let It Shine review
On Saturday the 25th of February, viewers of BBC talent show ‘Let It Shine’ saw boyband Five To Five be crowned the winners, with each member landing a lead role in Take That singer-songwriter Gary Read more…
Music
Sussed: Paddy’s Day Club Guide
As everyone knows, it’s our national duty to go out and have fun on March 17th. Avoidance of this sacred tradition is tantamount to high treason. Yet maybe wading through a sea of puke Read more…
Music
Sussed: Albums of 2017
Despite being a year that most people would prefer to forget, when it comes to music releases, 2016 was lit. Kanye’s Life of Pablo, Queen B’s Lemonade, Bowie’s Blackstar, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, The Rolling Stones’ Read more…
Music
Sussed: Afrobeat
The birth of Afrobeat happened almost a decade after West African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana gained their independence from British rule in the 60’s. During a time where freedom and hope for future Read more…
Music
The power of pop as protest
The protest song is exciting, irreverent, and powerful, putting into words our frustration with inequalities of all description. For as long as pop has existed, there has been a subsection of righteous, rage-fuelled songwriters who Read more…
Music
What now after What.CD?
Last week saw the closure of the infamous music and file sharing site What.CD making them part of the club of fallen piracy giants like Napster, Kickass Torrents and the original Pirate Bay. In a Read more…
Music
“The End” for Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath. The words are like a hunting horn for any seasoned heavy metal fan. A 50-year-career marked by legendary music, solid friendship and innumerable vices is finally drawing to a close. After spending almost half Read more…
Music
Sussed: Christmas club guide
As another festive season rolls around, and people dust off their decorations, excitement mounts for two very different groups of people. While children everywhere refine and redraft their letters to Santa, Dublin’s revellers and clubbers are Read more…
Music
Do you know Fangclub?
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ppropriately for a band fronted by a man called Steven King, I catch up with Fangclub at Universal Ireland head offices just before Halloween. They’re on a short break between two legs of their UK Read more…
Music
Review: Metropolis 2016
There it sits, under a crescent moon, Leinster blue spotlights glinting off each individual mirror – the world’s largest disco ball, in the courtyard of the RDS – a signifier of the weekend to come. Read more…
Music
Scenery – Japan’s greatest contribution to Jazz
Grandiose statements require grandiose substantiation, and as such it’s a rare day that I would take such a concept to task. Though it is of little debate as to whether Mr. Ryo Fukui’s 1976 debut Read more…
Music
Review: Sleaford Mods at Vicar Street
Close to 1,000 spent their Thursday night at Vicar Street being hypnotised by a 45 year old ex-social welfare adviser repeatedly slapping his own head and unloading half a century of inequality, class division and Read more…
Music
Sussed: Metropolis 2016
Ireland’s biggest winter festival returns to the RDS after a stellar debut outing. Chic, Hot Chip and Le Galaxie were the highlights of a serious couple of days’ dancing in Donnybrook last year – but Read more…
Music
Review: American Football – American Football
Opening with a track entitled ‘Where Are We Now’ seems pretty apt considering that this is the first LP American Football has released this century. Though their sophomore offering is still self-titled, the album is Read more…
Music
Did Bob Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. “Wait, literature?” I hear you say. That’s right. The Swedish Academy has awarded him “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Music
Review: Death Grips at the Academy
It’s a long flight of stairs up to the Academy’s main room and on this night, getting close to Samhain, it felt like a liminal space, a passageway between the relative sanity of the street Read more…
Flux
On Raglans’ road
Raglans are an alternative rock band from Dublin. They consist of Stephen Kelly, Rhos Horan, Conn O’Ruanaidh and Brendan McGlynn. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2014 and was hugely successful. The Dublin based Read more… Read more…
Flux
How Mick Flannery rages against the capitalist ideal
“I’m just one person, I have to look after my own life. I can’t save this stuff… so I’m gonna have a pint,” Mick Flannery tells me over the hubbub in the Dame Tavern, reaching Read more…
Music
Review: A Seat at the Table by Solange
Eight years on from the groovy, upbeat album Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, Solange Knowles has emerged with a clean, crystal cut album full of emotion and thought. Solange Knowles has invited us to Read more…