The World Should Know has been around long enough by now for a consensus to have built up around it: that it shows a return to form after what’s now being seen — even, if I’ve read correctly, by Dave Couse — as the depressing damp squib of Genes. Well... that couldn’t be more wrong.
He's the spiritual leader of 'freakfolk', a scene that celebrates the quirky and off-beam. But behind Devendra Banhart's neo-hippy schtick is an awesomely talented songwriter.
The big news about Sufjan Stevens is that he plans to record a full album about each of the states of the USA. This is number two of 50, barring annexations, after 2003’s ode to his home patch Michigan
Billy Corgan didn’t get to be Billy Corgan without a serious sense of the perverse, and these days it’s there for all to see. It’s in the little things; like his tour stage design of grotesque twisted reptilian metal, Alien-esque; or his insistence on arriving on the Ambassador stage in a trenchcoat, winter scarf and knee-high army boots, while the midsummer heat has everyone else in the venue evaporating.
Having recently become obsessed by The Arcade Fire’s Funeral, in all its glorious furious ecstasy (nothing bar ‘Neighbourhood #1’ has been in my head for a month), I had some difficulty adjusting when I Am Kloot arrived in the house. You may not know them; they are low-key and lugubrious, like a Mancunian Lambchop, or Badly Drawn Boy with scruffier hats. They’re not exactly Wagner. They’re wonderful.
Often so dull as to be mesmerising, Paper Tigers is the kind of album you’d rather not write about at all; the 30 seconds it takes to glance through a review is 30 more than the music under discussion deserves. Here’s a hint, so you can get on with your lives: the claim goes that Caesars are “A garage band for the digital age”.
New Order are giants, the four-piece that saved guitar pop. At a terribly dull time in the '80s, they brought the rush of possibilities of electronic music to the knuckle-dragging indie masses and added sophistication, sex and mystery to their genre of choice, a genre dying on its arse. Every guitar band that has added electronica to its palette without fear of the sky falling in – from U2 to The Killers – owes New Order a cut.
New Order are giants, the four-piece that saved guitar pop. At a terribly dull time in the '80s, they brought the rush of possibilities of electronic music to the knuckle-dragging indie masses and added sophistication, sex and mystery to their genre of choice, a genre dying on its arse. Every guitar band that has added electronica to its palette without fear of the sky falling in – from U2 to The Killers – owes New Order a cut.
Fisherman’s Woman opens promisingly with a soft, soothing song called ‘Nothing Brings Me Down’. The unhurried tempo and warm acoustic timbre complements its script, an everyday scene of domestic satisfaction, a night in with the fire on and the feet up...
Given the chilly atmospheres which adorn his songwriting, it comes as no surprise to learn that Adrian Crowley composes it in his sleep. Thankfully, though, Niall Crumlish found him to be a thoroughly lucid and compelling interviewee.
How much does a record soak up the spirit of the place it’s recorded? Could Music From Big Pink have been birthed anywhere but Woodstock? Low anywhere but Berlin, by the wall? Inishbofin hosted A House’s I Want Too Much, and the songs were as harsh, bare and beautiful as the surrounding rocks, sand and storms.
According to Conor Deasy, the inspiration for ‘What Ever Happened to Corey Haim’, the lead single from Let’s Bottle Bohemia, is this: “We live in a time when popular culture has reached an all time low. It’s a culture of good fortune and gloating, where really vacant people with nothing to say are idolised.”
To entertain the notion that you are ‘forward-thinking’ with the implication that the bands around you are mired in the past, when your songs, sound and attitude are so patently a decade old, is odd and maybe delusional. This is not an argument for classicism, more an observation that it is just as conservative to lift from Suicide as Slade.
There’s a clear-eyed, sometimes sombre intensity you might not have expected from one so crusty-hatted, and indeed Gough knows when earnestness is oppressive. So One Plus One Is One ends on the note of optimism and tenderness on which it began.
Even ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, or so says American Splendor. Morrissey, pop’s foremost oddball-in-exile, has put a lot of living into this, his rebirth after seven years, and such a stretch in such an extraordinary life should provide rich, plentiful pickings. It does, in part.
If I make impossible demands of The Divine Comedy, it’s the fault of Absent Friends. The album of the year set the bar for the gig of a lifetime. (For which title it would have to go toe-to-toe with Dexys miraculous gig in Vicar St. last November.)
Lead Us Not Into Temptation, David Byrne’s soundtrack to Young Adam, was sublime, one of the best records of last year. Take a recent immersion in film scores and a well-known wildly wandering muse, and it’s no surprise that Grown Backwards has all the eclecticism of a soundtrack album, from vibrant chamber pop to protest songs and forwards to full-on arias. It’s like it was made by five different people.
If you’re like me, then The Divine Comedy 1993-96 was aural El Dorado, the last couple of albums were disappointing, and Absent Friends is the one you’ve been waiting for; the one you were worried Neil Hannon might never make.
Of course any album so named begs a review headlined “This Is Not The Best”. I can’t quite do it.
Still, give me a week – the more I’ve listened, the less I’ve liked This Is Not A Test.
Stephen Malkmus has bought into collective responsibility. He has elevated the Jicks – who played on 2001’s Stephen Malkmus – to the status of collaborators on Pig Lib and the second solo album suffers as a result.
Having broken up Pavement, STEPHEN MALKMUS has had plenty of time to devote to making his eponymous solo album and indulging his obsession with all things Irish from U2 to Thin Lizzy to Planxty. NIALL CRUMLISH cocks an ear and raises an eyebrow
If the name TINDERSTICKS is synonymous with images of grim-faced men in suits, peddling unbearably lovelorn songs of emotional destitution and heartbreak, then the Nottingham sextet have only themselves to blame. But, as frontman STUART STAPLES tells NIALL CRUMLISH, their new offering Simple Pleasure swops despondency for optimism with brilliant results.
Arab Strap sexual politics is politics without spin doctors. No airbrush gets applied to Aidan Moffat's luridly graphic documentary on the decline and decay of yet another failed, frustrated relationship.
Sex & Death & Rock 'n' Roll
With The Divine Comedy's new album Casanova, the dreamily romantic Neil Hannon has come over all carnal. "I felt I had to get an awful lot of real shit out of my system", he tells Niall Crumlish. "Sometimes you've got to get a bit scummy".
Though he was busking in Grafton Street at 14, it s taken Glen Hansard more than a few shakes of the lamb s tail to reach the plateau of success which his songwriting talents have, for so long, threatened to take him but after the colossal success of Revelate , The Frames are, finally, set fair to enjoy their day in the sun. Here, Glen and guitarist, Dave Odlum, put Niall Crumlish in the picture.
Though he was busking in Grafton Street at 14, it s taken Glen Hansard more than a few shakes of the lamb s tail to reach the plateau of success which his songwriting talents have, for so long, threatened to take him but after the colossal success of Revelate , The Frames are, finally, set fair to enjoy their day in the sun. Here, Glen and guitarist, Dave Odlum, put Niall Crumlish in the picture.
SHAMPOO are famous for looking cool, sounding cool and throwing large, heavy objects at interviewers who aren’t up to scratch. Risking his life for his readers: NIALL CRUMLISH.
Blow me down, it’s that chirpy Counting Crow adam duritz again, flapping his vocal chords on everything from bunking off the MTV awards, why the Rolling Stones are still “fucking great” and why he won’t be emigrating to Utah just yet. Witness for the defence: Niall Crumlish.
Queen of catharsis as the leader of Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh raised a few eyebrows with her debut solo album Hips And Makers, a sublimely private collection which made it all the way to the Top 10. Here she explains her approach to songwriting, the emotional extremes she suffers and what it’s like working with The Sexiest Man Alive to NIALL CRUMLISH.
They've got the songs, the attitude and the neatest line in Oxfam chic since The Smiths but when will Pulp be famous? Niall Crumlish delves into the seedy twilight world of Sheffield's new sex gods.
THEY LOVE CHOCOLATE, HATE SUPERMODELS AND THINK THE BEST WAY TO COMBAT RACISM AND SEXISM IS TO JUST GET UP ON STAGE AND PLAY. NIALL CRUMLISH DISCOVERS
THE PURE POP DELIGHTS OF THE VOODOO QUEENS.
IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN WHEN THOUSANDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE TAKE THAT OFTEN DAUNTING LEAP FROM SCHOOL TO COLLEGE. HERE, THE HOT PRESS STUDENT SPECIAL OFFERS ITS OWN INIMITABLE SAFETY NET.
ENTERTAINMENT OFFICERS FROM UCC, UCD, UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER, UCG, DCU AND THE UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK GIVE AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF LIFE ON THEIR PARTICULAR CAMPUSES.
LIR/RINGER (Whelan's, Dublin)
Tonight's opening act are in fact between names at the moment. Having gone from Dead Ringer to plain ole Ringer at this gig, they announced a new name which escaped these ears and those of the Lir fans in my immediate vicinity . . .
LIR/RINGER (Whelan's, Dublin)
Tonight's opening act are in fact between names at the moment. Having gone from Dead Ringer to plain ole Ringer at this gig, they announced a new name which escaped these ears and those of the Lir fans in my immediate vicinity . . .
"Every hero bores us at last" - Ralph Waldo Emerson. If it's journalistic objectivity you want, you've come to the wrong place.
You see, I've idolised Kim Deal since before my first encounter with a potty,
A new initiative from Musicbase could help to win more airspace for Irish music here. It's just one of a range of ideas floated by industry leaders. Report: NIALL CRUMLISH.
YOU MAY have been led to believe otherwise, but there are, in fact, no fewer than eight deadly sins; pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth and recording useless cover versions in an attempt to get a hit.
If you want to make a demo that won't be used to blackmail you a few years down the road to fame and fortune, there are a few things you should know. Here, the experts tell Niall Crumlish what they are.
