There’s been plenty of begging on social media in the last few week for tickets to this latest sold-out Mac Demarco show, but there aren’t many diehards who’ll part with one. The Canadian is one […]
Irish gigs round-up
PUSSY RIOT, Button Factory, Dublin, Thursday. It’s impossible to simply focus on the music of Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot, and try to ignore the infamous scandal of three members arrested in 2012 after performing in […]
Going the Distance: Columbia Mills interview
Columbia Mills have just released one of the late-stage Irish albums of the year, their debut A Safe Distance To Watch. The album builds on their previous EPs, — melancholy shoegaze and electronica with a […]
Irish gigs round-up
ANDREW WEATHERALL, Wigwam, Dublin, tonight. In an interview with The Star years ago, Andrew Weatherall told me he prefers smaller club gigs so he “can see the whites — or the reds — of people’s eyes”, […]
Real Gone is a bit of an outlier – even for Tom Waits
Tom Waits is a heritage act who doesn’t really play ball with the nostalgia crowd. Whenever there’s a rare news bulletin from Waits HQ I get a naive jolt of hope that he’s going on […]
You can easily forget how huge Depeche Mode are
When Depeche Mode started their European tour in May they shared a video as a reminder that they’re the biggest band in the world – in some parts. It was a clip – since shared […]
Irish gigs round-up
COM TRUISE, Button Factory, Dublin, tomorrow If you have enough internet time on your hands you can literally find thousands of synthwave and retrowave artists online, a vast underground community of electronic producers in thrall to […]
Irish gigs round-up
CRADLE OF FILTH, The Limelight, Belfast, Monday; The Academy, Dublin, Tuesday. A heavy metal focus group couldn’t have organised this gig – with Cradle of Filth sure to win all the Halloween costume awards. The British veterans have been […]
Richie Hawtin gets up Close at Metropolis
Before Metropolis started two years ago in November 2015, an Irish winter festival seemed like a hard sell. By October every year we’re usually done with the festival spamming all through the summer and we’re […]
Liam’s big mouth routine is the PR win of the year
Ireland’s newest winter festival was nearly left out in the cold after a group of residents lodged an appeal — but the first ever Samhain festival is going ahead at Weston Airport, 20 minutes west […]
Dublin Blues Fest kicks off – with no blues
The Blues Fest in Dublin is an unashamed nostalgia trip to warm up the coldest of winter hearts — but one tune by headliners Steely Dan will strike a particular chord with everyone in the […]
Irish gigs of the week
GHOSTPOET, The Button Factory, Dublin, Tuesday, €16 Ghostpoet’s fourth album Dark Days and Canapes is the bleakest yet from the poet, rapper, singer, beatmaker and producer, but his acclaimed live show will be no less intense. The […]
Leftfield interview: ‘Leftism live is an enormous output of emotion’
Ask any random person to recall 1995 in music and Britpop will come up right away. If you were to commission a talking heads nostalgia programme or a Q magazine special, you’d be searching for […]
The Masseduction of Annie Clark
A countless number of bands can be filed under ‘art-rock’ no matter how much they deserve it, but St Vincent has made a case for her whole career as a work of performance art. Texan Annie […]
Nine Inch Knives: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross rework John Carpenter’s Halloween theme
It’s not often you need a spoiler alert when you’re discussing a new tune, but this new Nine Inch Nails rework of John Carpenter’s Halloween is better when you don’t know what happens at the […]
Moo Kid 