REVIEWS
Album reviews
It's unlikely too many albums released this year will prove half as much fun as Javelin's full debut No Más. In fact, unless Goldie Lookin Chain return - and are actually funny this time...
There really is something special happening right now among Irish bands trading in rousing, urgent guitar music. From And So I Watch You From Afar's ear-shattering full debut to Not Squares...
The second long-player from the newly slimmed-down Baltimore three-piece is a quietly self-assured piece of work. J. Gerrit Welmers, William Cashion and Samuel T. Herring have been steadily...
As the title implies, this is the second batch of good old-fashioned balladry from indie film star Zooey Deschanel and her musical accomplice, singer-songwriter and all-round über-talent Matthew...
As lead singer with The Czars, John Grant’s talents went largely unnoticed by the record-buying public, and a handful a good reviews couldn’t prevent that group from eventually...
The revolving-door policy at Dr. Dog has seen many band members come and go since it was founded by school friends Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman over a decade ago, but what hasn't left the band...
News that Josh Ritter is to have his first novel (entitled Bright’s Passage) published next summer won't come as any great surprise to those familiar with the Idaho native’s musical...
The campsite sits quietly as the small fire crackles and pops under the darkest of night skies. “Gather round, young children, for I have a tale to tell," an old man says, beckoning...
We all know the drill by now: a singer-songwriter still in his teens, backed by his high school buddies, sticks one of his first songs up on MySpace; enter Sub Pop Records stage left, and before...
Oh, to be a fly on the wall ‘round Kieran Hebden or Dan Snaith's house over the past year. It’s usually inevitable that old friends begin to drift apart during their thirties; sure,...
Caught live
First Aid Kit have come a long way since their last visit to Dublin. That was almost three years ago, when the Swedish sibling duo ope...
"There is a freedom in violence that I don't understand / And like I've never felt before..."
The last time Merrill Garbus' ...
Onstage stands a young man, Telecaster in hand. His early-nineties grunge hair sweeps across his face, a stark contrast to the shimmering golden jacket he is wearing. This is...
As the tagline of Guy Maddin's 2007 'docu-fantasia' masterpiece, My Winnepeg, proclaims: "The truth is relative". This is the...
Sunday brings me (in no particular order) bowling, a roast, an emo-ta-tha-bone beach, basketball,...
Saturday at ATP tells me this: Minehead does not possess a single mobile phone shop, or anywhere that might repair your car after midday at weekends. It does, however, have a lot of charity shops,...
Just over a year ago, Little Dragon performed at Dublin's Crawdaddy to an audience of not much more than a dozen punters. This evening, by contrast, havin...
_0.jpg "Caught Live: Wild Beasts + BRAIDS @ O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London")
Well-read Northerners – and recent Lady Gaga remixers – ...
There has always been a sense of fragility attached to The Antlers, as if at any moment the band's material (and perhaps even the band members t...