Blog: Hi-Fi Popcorn

SUBURBAN KIDS WITH BIBLICAL NAMES SKWBN are a quirky band who sing upbeat melodies about really nice things. Think The Boy Least Likely To, except a lot more brilliant. Their album - #3 (called so because their first 2 EPs were #1 and #2) - is an extremely addictive listen with not one bad track. The Swedish duo (and they don't sound either!) will soundtrack thousands of summers this year and I urgently await my chance [...]

LOVE IS ALL Oh wow. Hey people! You're gonna fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE IS ALL. Katch these kids in two thousand and siks. I've been listening to their album Nine Times That Same Song over and over and Dover... they're too good. Make Out Fall Out Make Up Download this song if it's the last thing you do. Even if that means [...]

PIXIES AND BOB DYLAN Blowin' In My Mind Totom - quite obviously a French genius - has laid Blowin' In The Wind on top of Where Is My Mind. It's amazing! I'd also recommend Grandaddy/Britney , Dylan/Bowie , Gorillaz/QOTSA/Love and NERD/The Beatles/Television . VERY good stuff!

GOODBOOKS GoodBooks: 2 words joined together because they have nice double "o" sounds. The band also have a nice sound. Coincidental? I think not. Passchendaele [Demo] A drum machine's blips gets procedures underway, and thus begins them being influenced by Kraftwerk and The Postal Service. But pity for Leo (on drums) is quickly forgotten because then we get the lovely keyboard-led narrative telling of a married man leaving to go to war. But the melodically delicious chorus is the clincher. And once [...]

GOOD SHOES I meant to write this sooner, but I just been busy. You said your girlfriend's pregnant now... Are you thinking "wait a sec...you've featured Good Shoes before"? Well, naw-aw, that was GoodBooks. With these 2 (great) bands on the border of some kind of bigness, you won't be the first to be confused by them in the coming months. If you like that whole angular rock thing, you'll love these, because they're probably the [...]

JEFFREY LEWIS LIVE IN CRAWDADDY - 28.02.06 Upon entering the old Harcourt Street train station on a frozen Tuesday night, the first thing we are greeted by is a vastly-stocked merchandise stall manned by Jeffrey himself. So we've seen him! Any mystery surrounding the New York anti-folk hero is removed when we see that he's just a shy guy behind a desk reading a paperback. Ham Sandwich are on stage. [...]

PHILIP E KARNATS Philip E Karnats is the man who helped beef up Tripping Daisy's Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb - probably my favourite album ever made - with some trumpets and guitars. Whilst his bandmates ventured off to form the Polyphonic Spree and the Secret Machines, he went solo and is soon to release his new album Pleasesuite. Two streaming songs have just been put on to his official website [...]

GUILLEMOTS LIVE IN WHELANS - 26.02.06 With their debut single currently being offered (and willingly bought) for sums in excess of €150 on an online auction house (I'm being vague to avoid giving eBay free advertising), it doesn't take a weatherman to realise that Guillemots will be huge. Waiting for them to appear onstage, we hear the clashing of percussion in time with the song being played over the P.A, so we turn around...ah! It's Guillemots! They make their way through the crowd and [...]

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS I went, I saw, they conquered. Their album is sure to be one of 2006's best. Playing live in front of a sold-out crowd of 200, the highlights were the fabulously dynamic The Enemy, the early-Libs-style Bang Bang You're Dead and the anarchic punk mess of Deadwood. In between, they slipped in 3 Libertines' songs to retain familiarity (Death on the Stairs, France and the stage invasion-inducing I Get Along). So not only [...]

DANIELSON FAMILE I don't know why they're wearing nurses' uniforms. They're a family of oddballs and that should be explanation enough. Coming on May 9th, Ships is their 7th album. It features appearances from Steve Albini, Deerhoof and regular contributor/part-time adopted Famile member Sufjan Stevens. First impressions of the LP suggest that the collaborative touch has been well and truly added. I'll let the music speak for music's self, but here's what you need to know... [...]

BELL X1 LIVE IN THE RDS - 31.01.06 Waiting Room are a prog rock group from Cork. They play loudly and are quite pleasing to the ears, but their sound is often lost whilst wandering for minutes on end as they doodle. But I digress. I'll save my breath for José Gonzalez, the second support act. Wow. Somebody get this man some playing cards. I presume he's only playing because he's bored. He badly needs to be enticed away from fingerplucking that [...]

THE FRAMES Why wasn't this a brilliant concert? The 2nd night of 3 entirely sold-out nights in Vicar Street and going by the Frames' reputation as an amazing live force (their most popular album is a live CD and they filled the 7,000 capacity Point Theatre just over a month ago), it really should've been. Well, I was here on false pretences because I (and pretty much everyone else) didn't realise that this string of shows [...]

JIM NOIR LIVE IN CRAWDADDY - 03.02.06 It's a little past 3pm in Tower Records, Dublin on a Friday afternoon. A tall man who closlely resembles Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy takes his seat alongside a friend to either side. To a crowd of around 50 stunned people, he acoustically plays a handful of tracks from his debut album 'Tower of Love' (an LP consisting of his 3 debut EPs, with a few newbies to keep longtime fans satisfied). Given the breathtakingly beautiful performance, amazing harmonies from [...]

GRANDADDY Oh, it's such a shame that Grandaddy have called it a day. I first got into them post-Polyphonic Spree, upon hearing that the Spree's first show was supporting the Grandfathers. Would the Spree have happened if it weren't for Grandaddy? Probably! But they formed especially for this support slot (so the legend goes), so we owe Grandaddy something for the Spree. But it's not like we don't owe them something already. They were (and still will be up until the release of Just Like The [...]

THE IMMEDIATE The Immediate are a 4 piece group from Dublin, who sound completely unlike anything I've ever heard come out of Dublin. They blend all sorts of magnificent sounds but never stray from the beautifully melodic. Signed to Fantastic Plastic Records , they have an EP 'Make Our Devils Flow' coming out in February and their recently completed (and fantastically titled) debut album 'In Towers And Clouds' will be on the shelves by May. [...]

FEAR OF MUSIC They're 4 teenagers from Manchester who've caused quite a stir in the underground with their debut eponymous EP. Listening to it, well! How could you guess their ages from it? You couldn't. Simple! Now, they've been signed by Sony and are going to be massive. There's quite a scent of easyworld, Weezer, Muse and Pixies being emitted from them... Oh, just figure them out for yourselves. [...]