Burials starts subtly - a mist of earnest vocals, rattly drums and sweet chord swells descends before being pierced by an angular (for want of a better word) power chord riff, that bursts in right where it's not expected. This is a pretty good way to start talking about the album, I think - right from the start, it challenges expectation and description alike. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic. I love this record, and which is something I guess should be clear before I go any further. Usually when you hear about something defying description, it [...]
<p><a href=" http://therevivalhour.com/trac k/hold-back-3">Hold Back by The Revival Hour</a></p> I've been waiting to hear the final version of this song for over a year, and I'm happy to say that what I heard before, though deeply impressive, seems less definitive now, like a bud beside a blooming rose. My first response was to wonder where in DM Stith's music had this expanse come from, and where he had learned to revel in it. On Heavy Ghost, a stretching blank night looms darkly, but here it has filled with glittering stars, that shine brighter the louder he sings. He's got the night [...]
Today we are lucky, because before finishing touring and taking a break for a while, Conor O'Brien has seen fit to bestow another gently-crafted sliver of beauty upon the world, this time accompanied by an equally affecting video, by Adrien Merigeau. You can download the song over at the Villagers site . It's beautiful.
Slow Club - Two Cousins I love this song for its rainbow synths, multicoloured, and descending violently, lurching out of the sky. I love it for its heartful bellow, simultaneously "Hold on!" and "Hell no!", and the notes that beg to be held a little longer, like the warm thing struggling into your arms as you sleep, someone you realise you've always hoped to to share your bed and dreams and silly sleepy moments with. It's like that really, vulnerable yet intense, happy yet fraught with desire and insecurity. This song somehow summons all [...]
In December of last year, Arcade Fire came to Dublin to play two nights at the O2. I was there for both of them, and I remain convinced that no other band can cause the same kind of joyous riot on stage that they do. On record, the band are exquisite. Live, they're even better; a raggedy, blistering mess, all deep breaths and impulsive dancing, intense stares and musical fireworks. If you were there the first night, you may well have met me. I was one of the volunteers for Partners in Health , [...]
Sandro Perri - Love and Light It's hot outside today. Like, shimmering pavements hot, and everyone's kinda quiet, and a little shocked and awed, if you know what I mean, because it turns out the moon is a girl. A pretty girl, all subtle sway and sexy cast glances, and she's strolling around like she owns the place, which maybe she does. I mean, if it turns out the moon is someone you'd very much like to go to bed with, who knows what else might be going on. I guess this is the [...]
I've been listening to this song really closely. I've been parsing away its steady layers of ringing guitar, its semi-National croon, the rhythm that pads along heavily. Sometimes it sounds like that time I stood in my parents' bedroom a few smoky days after it had gone up in flames, a crust of black layered on everything, bedclothes and duvets that would never again be clean collapsed in the shrinking corner. It sounds like being close to something terrible in your past, trying not to see too much of it, but willing to acknowledge that it has affected you. Then [...]
This is buckets of fun. This is like cycling along the promenade by night, with the sun on a bit of rope, shining everything around you. This is when you are so downright happy and possessed by a glorious disposition that you don't even notice you're alone, or that other people aren't brimming with the joy of how beautiful everything is Right Now. When you sing with a silly voice just because you can. When you have no work to do and know exactly where your place is. This sounds like a bit of a mess, I admit, guitar scars [...]
James Vincent McMorrow - Follow You Down to the Red Oak Tree Some months back, a friend and I met James Vincent McMorrow by a beach north of Dublin. As you may have gathered, James is one of my favourite musicians, and when the plan to start recording musicians playing songs in settings where they were written and recorded, he was first on the list. His songs are imbued with an earthy charm, a genuine sense of place and experience. Great things have always come from the wilderness, and this music proves it. [...]
This is a new song by The Gorgeous Colours . It is called 'It's Okay to be Normal', and it is very fine indeed. It shows, once again, their singular knack for a beautifully catchy little melody - in this case, played wistfully on a breezy synth - that sounds somehow both universally catchy, yet tailor-made for you. In fact, it might be the very first little tune you bashed out on that plastic Fisher Price keyboard you got for Christmas so many years ago - the one that sounded even better after you left it out in the [...]
Months ago, I saw The Middle East come to a Dublin stage , and ramble along, singing, swaying, like a happy wagon of people propelled by their own music down the road, and for one night, it seems you're going the same way. This song, 'Deep Water', was one of the night's oddest moments. It's so soft and understated that it almost seems like a single wavering note held by one voice, and no more than one member of the band is playing at the same time. It's a tale told by the last person left awake, [...]
The Luyas - Too Beautiful To Work This song starts all frantic and confused, clamouring for your attention at the piano, hammering out a song that makes almost no sense. It shouldn't work but it does. The rhythms are all unfinished, the vocals murmured and breathless, the lyrics jarring and disconnected. Ideas collide in mid-air and land on the drumbeat to be carried along like scrap metal on a conveyer belt, hurried away by the only part of this mess that makes sense - and somehow at the end, welded together ingeniously into the finest [...]
{ via } <a href=" http://theambienceaffair.bandc amp.com/track/weeds">Weeds by The Ambience Affair</a> This song is at least slightly about the Irish countryside and how it might look at you, and that's the bit that speaks to me most. It howls into life like a wolf from the woods, and given that it's about ten years since I lived in the quiet country dark, it gives me the weirdest feeling of being back in a childhood place, cold and abandoned, layered [...]
It's been over two months since I had the time to properly turn my attention to writing about music, or felt the need to. I've been busy, to put it bluntly. I have a job I like, at a great company, and one that allows for certain amazing things to happen from time to time, as I will describe here, soon enough. But anyway, enough of that, and less of that other stuff, and more talk of music. There are less songs here than in previous years, which I think means I wasn't all that impressed with 2010. [...]
40. Polyphonic Spree - Soldier Girl This song feels like love, but the militant, insistent kind, where not only is your heart beating like a marching band, but you're going to follow the feeling as it conquers the world. 39. A Classic Education - Badlands and Owls It starts with a melody that digs into you, or puts its arms around you and drags you out into the desert or the dancefloor, promising [...]
Auld Lang Syne - Writhing Days To celebrate: a Christmas song from one of the most under-rated bands I've ever heard. It's a real smokey epic, a smouldering yarn from what sounds like an extended family of noises. Trust me, it's a grower. Merry Christmas everyone!
53. Bright Eyes - The First Day Of My Life Listen to this, turning a globe in your ends, dotting the places you've been: I was born here, here and here. 52. Uzi + Ari - Don't Black Out I've noticed I tend to be quite partial to anything that concerns itself thematically with the link between falling asleep and the cold. I'm not sure why, maybe some sort of Hibernian affinity for [...]
Peter Broderick - Pulling The Rain If I could go back through my life and assign different songs to different scenes, rescoring them maybe, then this song would be for the times I sat as a child, still and invisible, in darkened cars, hearing the steady patter of rain on the roof, waiting for someone to come back, and take me home, or maybe, like one night, called to the house of a relative, in the silent moonless countryside, waiting to be told it's okay to come in, waiting to know how bad the news [...]
Jose Delhart - Accountability This song is for sleepy people. There's a very quiet, albeit very steady level of energy here. The song never gets too excited, never moves too fast, never speaks above a murmur, but it brings you along with it anyway, tempting you with its narcoleptic charm rather than overwhelming your inhibitions through agitation. The guitars doze along underneath murmured words, and in the background a saw hums, hoping not to be noticed. It's all quite lovely, really. This is from Jose's album, [...]
Halves - I Raise Bears Like much of Halves' stunning debut album, this feels like being a warm person in a place of sharp cold. It's a little like living in a hotel when you have no where else to call home. The twin vocals sing together, huddled and intertwined like scarves gathering snowflakes and frost, the wind rolling about them wildly. It's a gorgeous song, and it only gets better with each listen. {Buy}
the torture garden
French Graffiti Artists Videojack “N*ggas In Paris”
Chiddy Bang - "By Your Side" (Official Video)
Video: Justin Vernon Teams Up With The Roots For “Perth”
Earl Sweatshirt- "Home"
Gorillaz Collaborate With Andre 3000 & James Murphy On “DoYaThing”
