Category Archives: Music

Every kind of sound imaginable.

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Roisín El Cherif – Kerosene

What you may need to know…

01. Dublin-based Galwegian Roisín El Cherif comes to the singer-songwriter fray from a multimedia background, including assistant director work on Brooklyn, Vikings, and others.

02. Her experience informs the video to single Kerosene, which she wrote, co-produced and directed with FailSafe Films.

03. The tune itself is a proposition seemingly made for bigger stages, which gives precedence to El Cherif’s voice, at once plaintive and possessed of certain presence.

04. Roisín is playing at King Kong Club in Dubland on April 5 and has a few live session vids upcoming via The OB Blog’s OBSessions series. Stay tuned to her various social media for more.

Verdict: Big, sweeping pop with an ambitious visual identity to match. Much here to love for fans of the singer-songwriter oeuvre.

Roisín El Cherif

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Loner Deluxe – Winters Last Fire

What you may need to know…

01. Loner Deluxe is the nom-de-beats and solo folktronica project of Rusted Rail Records man, Keith Wallace.

02. “…like a blend of Godspeed, Four Tet, glitchy little electronic sound effects, haunting fairground music, Boards of Canada and a kinda strange psyche folk version of My Bloody Valentine“, said the dearly departed Road Records at one point.

03. Winters Last Fire, is the lead song on the project’s newest ‘digital cassingle’ Snowed Under, released this past January. Animated sci-fi visuals courtesy of Galway’s Tiny Epics.

04. The song was selected as part of An Taobh Tuathail Vol. 7 by RnaG tastemaker Cian O’Cíobháin, alongside tunes by Sufjan Stevens and Nils Frahm, among others. Good company.

05. Snowed Under is the winter-themed sequel to previous digital cassingle (which is a nice concept for small groupings of songs that don’t quite feel like a “proper” E.P., in fairness) The Coast is Clear.

Verdict: We might be a bit past winter but this is still music to come home and put on a cup of tay to…

Loner Deluxe

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White Line Fever – playing Cork, Galway and Kilkenny this month

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. Named for an apparent lack of focus that afflicts long-distance truck drivers (and the Peckinpah-esque truxploitation flick of the same name), Cork’s White Line Fever trade in a proggy, post-rock-inflected strain of folk rock.

02. 2014’s Anomie EP set the tone for their current live show, a concise, yet polished two-tracker that they’ve used as the foundation for their current live sound, to be heard on their upcoming follow-up.

03. Streaming above is the band’s most recent video, Lordship & Bondage, filmed and recorded live at Youghal’s Claycastle Studios, and mastered by Murdock man Aidan Cunningham.

04. The four-piece is playing the rest of a series of spot-shows with alt-rockers Harbouring Oceans and singer-songwriter Míde Houlihan throughout March, hitting the Crane Lane Theatre in Cork on the 18th, and the Brewery Corner in Kilkenny on the 26th. The band also plays Galway’s Citóg night at the Roisín Dubh on the 23rd.

Verdict: Minimalist, yet somehow massive, the band’s recorded output and confident live excursion so far bode well for the future. Check ’em out.

White Line Fever

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Therapy? – Tides

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. The gatekeepers of the Irish underground are in rude health as always. Twenty-seven years and counting in the game, with their fourteenth album Disquiet hitting shelves last year, Ballyclare/Larne’s Therapy? unleash their best ‘pop’ single in years with Tides.

02. Though many casual observers associate the boys in black with their major-label heyday in the mid-Nineties, they never went away.

03. Sadly unloved belters include 1999’s Suicide Pact – You First and 2004’s Never Apologise Never Explain, but most notably a pair of honest-to-jaysus classics in 2010’s cerebral Crooked Timber and 2012’s groovy A Brief Crack of Light.

04. Disquiet, from which Tides is taken, acts as a sequel of sorts to 1994’s million-selling Troublegum, and sees the band revisiting that album’s teenage protagonist as a middle-aged man in the throes of further tumult.

05. The song itself is inspired singer/guitarist Andy Cairns‘ time living in Dun Laoghaire [Co Dublin], as evidenced by the single’s artwork.

06. Keen punk fans will spot the other reference in the cover art immediately, and it’s intentional: Bob Mould, of hardcore trailblazers/accidental college-rock inventors Hüsker Dü was a major influence on the song’s writing.

Verdict: Though the album itself feels a little retro after the band’s insistence on forward-thinking for the better part of three decades, Tides is one of its highlights. Here’s hoping for more of this somewhat psychey, washed-out pop in the not too dim ‘n’ distant.

Therapy?

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Imlé – Fún Orm

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. Decent Irish(-language) hip-hop brought to you by Imlé, a Gaelgeoir collective of musicians and creatives led by Raidió na Life/Wild Promises man Cian MacCárthaigh, and flanked by numerous guests and collaborators, including, on this track, Gaelgeoir wordsmith MC Muipéad.

02. Part of a resurgence of the mother tongue in Irish independent/contemporary music, it seems: as well as appearing on The Gloaming‘s reconstructed versions of trad standards, an Gaeilge can be heard these days in the works of bands like West Cork black-metallers Corr Mhóna, as well as via various compilation/rearrangement projects over the past few years.

03. Imlé formally kicked off last May at Féile na Bealtaine, and swiftly followed up with the launch of their debut single Pádraig. They’ve since appeared at Electric Picnic’s Puball Gaeilge stage. Not just dealing in hip-hop, either, as you may gather from listening to Pádraig, their work explores the contemporary music landscape.

04. 2016 looks to be a busy year for the boys, as they launch their debut full-length later this year, via Irish-language gatekeepers Gael Linn. Production comes from The Frames/Ham Sandwich desk-man Karl Odlum.

Verdict: Ceol den scoth. More contemporary music as Gaeilge, please (suggestions are more than welcome in the comments), and ways to put it into the curriculum, while we’re at it.

Imlé

The Shaker Hymn

The Shaker Hymn – launching new album Do You Think You’re Clever? on April 1st and gigging around the country throughout April and May.

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. Friends since childhood, and based in the real capital, The Shaker Hymn are a four-piece with indie, pop and psych-rock sensibilities. Formed in 2012, the band came together after a two-month American excursion.

02. Streaming above is the video for Trophy Child, the first single from second album Do You Think You’re Clever?. Follow-up single Sucking It Out features a GoPro-driven video filmed at Cork’s Mother Jones’ Flea Market, which can be seen here.

03. Do You Think You’re Clever? launches on April 1. The whole LP was recorded in nine days, and will be the band’s second album just inside of 24 months, following 2014’s Rascal’s Antique.

04. The accompanying tour kicks off the same night, with a date at the newly-reopened Connolly’s of Leap, before the band spends April and May playing out, heading to Galway, Lahinch, Cork city, Westport, Cavan, Clonakilty, Myrtleville and Ballydehob, winding up at the Bernard Shaw in Dublin. Full date and venue details available here.

Verdict: Plenty here for fans of Britpop’s reverbier excesses, psych’s more accessible corners or those just in search of some good, honest rock ‘n’ roll. Approved.

The Shaker Hymn.

Toner's

Hic.

The Alternative Sunday Social Club (which goes down every Sunday, as you might have gathered, between 4-8pm) has set up shop at Toner’s on Baggot Street, with the intention of putting the street back on Dublin’s musical map.

ASSC’s Barry Hartigan writes:

Long before Whelan’s in Wexford St. turned that part of town into a music hub, all the gigs used to happen in three pubs on Baggot St. back in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

The Baggot Inn itself is of course the one that most people associate with music, but there were also bands playing in Toner’s and The Pembroke.

Now, however, two of those are a dim and distant memory, but Toner’s remains pretty much unchanged and we’re putting bands on there again on a regular basis for the first time in several decades….

Playing this Sunday are blues power-trio The Business.

The Business are one of Ireland’s finest and longest performing blues bands. For almost 35 years the band has maintained a hard working schedule bringing the best in blues and rock to the country. Featuring Pat Farrell (guitar & vocals), Jim Tate (bass) and Grant Nicholas (drums).

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

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Brotherlode – Asian Cuisine

Here’s what you may need to know…

01. Brotherlode is a lo-fi ambient outfit led by Dublin DIY denizen Seán Bean.

02. Asian Cuisine is taken from their newly-released album of the same name, out this weekend on cassette, CD and digital via tape specialists Little L Records.

03. Referred to as “under-produced music for an over-produced society”, this record was a completely DIY affair, and uses this to its advantage, roaming between ambient, jazz and psychedelia.

04. This tune, premiering today on #YMLT, is about spice bags. You can get some more over at United Cassettes, who are streaming Anne, Burning now.

05. The best spice bag in Ireland? Suggestions welcome below.

Verdict: A lot to like here in a weird, spacey take on Dublin’s ever-changing and – progressing lo-fi sound. If that floats yer boat, get yerself a tape.

Brotherlode