As the days shorten and the darkness prevails, you may need some form of aural administration to ease your slide into wintery malaise and counteract the crunch of leaves underfoot. Melody’s Echo Chamber is here to provide the enveloping warmth. This debut … Continue reading
Animal Collective have reconvened in their homeland of Baltimore for their latest album Centipede Hz. Written in Josh Dibb’s family barn, their ninth long-player sees the musician returning to the fold after his last appearance on Strawberry Jam in 2007, and the … Continue reading
How deadly is Sargent House? In between frequent drunken tweets, the record label has steadily amassed a formidable roster of great bands, not least Rhode Island’s Fang Island, whose excellence - in the Bill & Ted sense – is unrivalled. Fang Island’s … Continue reading
Whereas last year’s Primavera Sound in Barcelona was bigger in scale and capacity than ever before and (in this reviewer’s opinion) suffered as a result, things have been taken back to the village feel with this inaugural sister event in the hilly, … Continue reading
Photos by Laura Nolan. We’ve all paid our dues and the weather has finally relented for the final day in the IMMA grounds, with shades, suncream and scepticism that the rain will leave us alone. It does though, and grateful bodies are … Continue reading
All photos by Seán Smyth. Location location location. Dublin’s city festival returns this year after its largely successful debut in 2011 – bar and booze malfunctions aside – and with an extra day to play with this time around. Easily accessible from … Continue reading
The Magnetic Fields are one of those bands that elicit devotion from their more loyal fanbase; twenty years into their career, they have never really troubled the mainstream but have consistently released interesting records, most notably their three volume classic 69 Love … Continue reading
Lower Dens formed in 2009 around the axis of front woman Jana Hunter, the classically trained violinist and guitarist familiar to followers of the so-called ‘freak-folk’ scene, around whose fringes she skirted with its leading light Devandra Banhart. The band’s 2010 debut … Continue reading
After the near-death bout of pneumonia and intensive care stay that drip fed directly into their 2008 album Songs in A & E, Spiritualized frontman Jason Pierce continues to seek spiritual atonement through sound in the band’s seventh album, Sweet Heart Sweet … Continue reading
With a new Grizzly Bear album coming out this year, the first since their 2009 magnum opus Veckatimest, multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rossen has taken the opportunity to release this brief five track solo EP in the interim. Silent Hour/Golden Mile is built around … Continue reading
Photos by Kerry Guinan. We haven’t yet had the pleasure of a listen to the latest release from Jason Pierce’s Spiritualized before tonight’s Vicar Street appearance, with three-years-in-the-making seventh album Sweet Heart Sweet Light due sometime this month. Originally pencilled in for … Continue reading
Hands up to this one; I’ve never listened to any of The Shins albums before and the reason for this lies solely at the feet of that Scrubs chap and that shit film he made. Is that a good enough reason to … Continue reading
The weight of expectation lay heavily on this one. Postponed from last November and upgraded from Whelan’s to the chagrin of many original ticketholders, the Jeff Mangum show finally settled in Vicar Street. Mangum’s near-mythical indie credentials, coupled with a mercurial album … Continue reading
