Blog: Thrill Pier

Part 1: 30-26 Part 2: 25-21 20. Condo Fucks - Fuckbook (Matador) The 5th album (and first in a decade) from New London, CT 3-piece The Condo Fucks sees the garage rock legends take on 12 cover versions in their own inimitable style. Okay, it sounds "awful," almost like the band simply threw up a couple of mics in their rehearsal room, hit play and then cranked their [...]

Daniel Johnston will play Vicar St. on April 3rd with Holland's BEAM orchestra, an 11 piece pop and jazz ensemble who will rearrange and perform some of Johnston's songs and perform them with him, they'll also perform some of Johnston's songs by themselves. It sounds like an interesting idea but I'm not quite sure if it'll live up to the remarkable Daniel Johnston & friends gigs that happened in Whelan's last time DJ was here. There'll also be an exhibition of Daniel Johnston's artwork on the night. Tickets cost €30 and are on sale tomorrow.

25. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (Bloodshot) 2000 Recorded in Nashville over two weeks as then and soon-to-be-former band Whiskeytown was in the process of collapsing Ryan Adams' debut solo effort is a beautifully heartfelt and loose sounding collection of lovelorn Americana which may, thanks to it's much gentler mood compared to his previous work, have thrown his then existing fanbase for a bit of a loop yet it did announce his talent to a much broader range of people. As the decade draws to a close the criticisms of Adams both [...]

25. Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem (P.W. Elverum & Sun Ltd.) There can't be many people making music today whose catalogue varies between epic ambient works, contemplative folk and black metal but Phil Elverum is one of the few dudes who can pull it all off. His latest album, only a year after the very quiet Lost Wisdom is an almost shocking about turn towards what is probably the most ominous sounding music of his career. Of course this isn't the first time that Elverum has dipped his toe into this [...]

"A great decision", from Toronto earlier in the month. It's very New Order.

30. Tom Waits - Alice (Anti) 2002 In a lot of ways Alice is the record that most resembles his early period that Tom Waits has made since 1978's Blue Valentine . The reason for this may lie in precisely how these songs fit in to Waits' body of work. They were originally written around 1990 for the Robert Wilson directed play of the same name that was first performed in 1992 and it was a decade before the "great lost Waits masterpiece" finally made it onto record shop [...]

In the last few months I've had plenty of conversations with people I know that went along the lines of ... "You going to ATP?" "Yeah." "Which one." "The Nightmare one, with MBV." "Bummer, I'm going to the 10 years one, much better lineup." Okay fine, I'd already committed to going to the first ATP of this month before the second one was announced but in terms of my musical affections it's hard to find bands closer to my heart than Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Yo [...]

30. Groom - At The Natural History Museum (self released) The first release from Dublin based indie-pop-alt-country outfit Groom that features the band's current lineup (now including a double drum attack and the addition of a Belgian guitarist whose name none of his bandmates seem to be able to pronounce properly) was a 6 track "mini-album" featuring prog length epics, moments of gentle Belle And Sebastian style pop and searing guitar solos right out of the Wilco playbook. Not to mention Mike Stevens' always clever songwriting. New full length due next year is being [...]

40. The Dodos - Visiter (Frenchkiss) 2008 Top track: Fools 39. Final Fantasy - Final Fantasy has a good home (Tomlab) 2005 Top track: This is the dream of Win and Regine 38. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights [...]

50. Iron And Wine - The Creek Drank the Cradle (Sub Pop) 2002 49. TV On The Radio - Dear Science (4AD) 2008 The record that 48. Parenthetical Girls - Entanglements (Tomlab) 2008 [...]

... but did make the long list when I was brainstorming over the last couple of days. In alphabetical order, by band/artist name, like you'd find in a record shop. Some of these were close to the top 50, some were just things that popped into my head and were never genuine contenders. There's probably other albums that I haven't considered that could go here but originally I was just planning on doing a top 30 countdown but eventually expanded it to 50. If I forgot it then I probably don't think it's good enough [...]

Skinny Wolves Presents Xiu Xiu Saturday 20th February 2010 Whelans, Wexford St, Dublin Doors 7.30 Ticket Price : 15e ( from Road, City Discs, http://www.tickets.ie/skinnywo lves ) I think the last time I saw Xiu Xiu was at a festival in San Francisco in 2006 and they were fantastic. I missed their last Dublin gig becasue I was Springsteen last year. This should be really good. Huzzah Skinny Wolves, huzzah.

"Lewis Takes Action" is the first single from Heartland which is out on Domino in January. You can download it (and by doing so enter a competition for one of 25 signed 7"s) here .

Low plays The Great Destroyer Wire Superchunk Oribital Mission Of Burma Dr. Dog King Khan and BBQ Wire Japandroids Lee Scratch Perry Sic ALps Circulatory System

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via Richie Egan on Twitter. redneck manifesto news - we mix our new record this week in france, and we play whelans, dublin on new years eve. look forward to both.

... just because Trent Reznor owns them. Nine Inch Nails are selling a load of equipment and instruments because they aren't touring any more. In the coming weeks you'll be able to bid for all sorts of keyboards and effects units but for now there's a number of guitars, basses etc. up for sale. The provenance of these instruments probably means that they'll go for a lot more than they're worth but at the minute the initial prices for everything seems to be quite reasonable. List of things for sale here . [...]

Straight outta the USA's smallest state (that's Rhode Island by the way dummy) are Deer Tick and if you're not going to ATP this weekend or Sonic Youth in Vicar St. then their gig in Whelan's on Sunday might be a pretty good bet. Thanks to the people at Foggy Notions I've got a double pass to give away to the gig PLUS ... the winner will get copies of both their albums and some stickers too. To be in with a chance to win send your answer to this question to thrillpiercomp@gmail.com with "Deer Tick" in [...]

After selling out (I think) the downstairs venue there English folk revivalists Mumford And Sons are coming back to Dublin to play The Academy on March 18th. A week later on the 25th Mowai championed (and signed to their label) Errors play Academy 2.

I feel as though I've missed the boat a little on Not Squares having been a little out of the loop for a few months and missed all their recent HWCH/Richter Collective connected trips down (to Dublin obviously, any arrival 'round my manor by the 3 of them could only be as the result of seriously wrong turn made somewhere around Dundalk in a bid to avoid paying the toll at the bridge) from Belfast recently. They played Pogo in the Twisted Pepper on Saturday night and having gone to Banter in the upstairs room (more of which after a [...]