Roddy Woomble needs no introduction or support on a bright but chilly Belfast afternoon. We’re full of Sunday lunch and optimistic anticipation of a great show as the occasional Idlewild front man graces the stage with Seonaid Aitken on fiddle…
Category: Reviews
Live: Teddy Thompson @ Black Box, Belfast – 25/01/11
The Black Box is a dedicated arts venue in the heart of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter and tonight it’s packed for one the most keenly anticipated shows of the Out to Lunch Festival. Even though it’s a school night the beers…
Album: Tu Fawning – Hearts on Hold
The minute Tu Fawning’s debut album Hearts on Hold opens with I Know You Know, one thought will hit you. Portishead. The debt to Geoff Barrow and co. is glaring in this subtle but infectious tune. But don’t get sucked…
Album: Anthony D’Amato – Down Wires
First, let’s do some name dropping. Anthony D’Amato has performed onstage with Bruce Springsteen, and supported the likes of Jesse Malin, Marah and Matthew Ryan. To record Down Wires, he put together a backing band comprised of Canadian star Sam…
Album: Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards – Shakes
It creaks open like an old wooden door in a Elizabethan house, does Dan Michaelson’s voice. The centrepiece of any album Michaelson features on, be it with the Coastguards or the slightly more established Absentee, it’s a voice that is…
Singles: Laura Marling & Johnny Flynn, The Vaccines, Sea of Bees
The Vaccines – Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) ‘Wreckin Bar (Ra Ra Ra)’ by The Vaccines is one minute and twenty- four seconds of infectious guitar music, with touches of retro, surf, the 70s, lo- fi and something new. Justin…
Live: Dirty Projectors @ Koko, 07/12/2010
Listening to the Dirty Projectors is a bit like being inside an oddly syncopated clockwork toy; so much so that as I refresh my memory of this gig, my sister asks why I have two songs playing at once (it’s…
Live: Yann Tiersen @ Exeter Phoenix Theatre, 10/11/2010
Yann Tiersen and his band don’t like to make a huge entrance. They shuffle onstage in checked shirts, jeans and Converse, each not quite waving, but motioning, to the audience: completely unaffected by the roaring applause they elicit. Their casualness…
Live: Ruarri Joseph @ Exeter Phoenix 25/11/10
After a somewhat turbulent 2009 that saw Ruarri Joseph side tracked by family life for almost a year, it’s clear from the moment the Cornish singer-songwriter steps on stage at the Exeter Phoenix with his new band that’s he’s happy…
Album: Bruce Springsteen – The Promise
Here’s a thing, The Promise is an album full of songs that didn’t make it on to Springsteen’s classic album ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’. That fact isn’t something that might get someone excited about a music release, you might imagine…