Plan B has done for UK hip-hop, so might Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly do for punk rock. Similarly based around one young man and a bashed-up acoustic guitar, ‘The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager’ has a terse, tense intro that suggests it might explode into some kind of emo anthem – and it duly does. We’ve waited too long for someone to rescue the singer-songwriter tradition from the bland mush it’s turned into; in this impassioned 20-year-old from Southend, we might just have found our own superhero.
Having lived a peripatetic existence for several years, Katell Keineg has now settled in Dublin and is earning deserved kudos for her moody brand of arty acoustica.
If the mere mention of the word 'art' generally has you reaching for either the remote or the revolver, I'm with you all the way - and as movie premises go, it might seem that the tale of a bohemian New York photographer's struggle to retain her 'artistic integrity' is one best left to the poseurs.
Revisit our Nirvana cover story from earlier this year, encompassing ten-years-on recollections from Butch Vig, Greil Marcus and Mark Lanegan and one of Hot Press' undisputed highlights of '02
The Dandy Warhols once teetered on the verge of a gigantic mainstream crossover with a song that boasted the opening lines "I never thought you'd be a junkie/Because heroin is so passe",
Still, it’s great to hear that the man who once told a Hot Press seminar that the secret of life was somewhere between C and A minor is back in the running.
One of the funniest comedy sketches I ever saw concerned the timelessly naff quality of Queen’s sartorial sensibilities. It was on an Armstrong And Miller show about four years ago, and was set in the year 2040. A guide was taking a group of tourists around a stately home, which was putatively an exact replica of Freddie Mercury’s real life abode. The titular comedians were paid actors playing – for “educational purposes”, understand – Brian May and the late singer, with Ben Miller’s skin-tight leather costume being an especially funny tribute to Mercury’s near-heroically outrageous fashion sense.
The George, in Dublin's George's St., has been refurbished and extended. CHRIS DONOVAN reports on the changes in one of hip Dublin's most impressive drinking emporia.
Another animated feature? But haven’t I seen 765,664 of these this year already? But wait. This one is from Aardman Studios so, in common with debilitating bone disease, it has to be better than Barnyard, right?
This is a big, bad whirlwind of a movie with remarkably complex protagonists and appropriately storming performances which simultaneously provides Turkish delights and great big ‘Welcome To Hell’ placards. An absolute shot in the arm for European cinema.
Before Night Falls marks a radical departure from the intimacy of Julien Schnabel’s first film, into the realms of the kind of quasi-mystical beauty not witnessed on screen since Kundun
Consider Last Night… a lost weekend in a phantasmagorical theme park. I’d lobby for its creator to be awarded the freedom of the city, but going by these tunes, he’s already got it.
Around two years ago, Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat told this reviewer that the finest gig he’d ever seen was by an American musician named Devendra Banhart
A Home At The End Of The World isn’t the balls-out flick it once was, and Colin’s manhood has been cut and discarded, having been deemed too big a distraction.
Whatever your fancy chances are the capital will be able to oblige. Here, the Hot Press team pound the pavement in selfless pursuit of Dublin's hottest - and coolest - nightspots.
A worthy and admirable, if less than high-octane biopic of esteemed author Iris Murdoch, Iris is based on her husband's account of their relationship and her eventual struggle with the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's disease.
The annual Celtic Connections festival is sadly under-profiled in Ireland, especially when it can attract knock-out performances from the likes of Roddy Frame.
Hardly had the ink dried on the last issue s item of advice for would-be entrants for the revised Bacardi Plugged band competition than a number of missives arrived in asking why there was no advice for those who might be thinking of entering the song part of the same project. As some of the senders know where I live I d thought I better oblige.
After the spiking of their last album led to the demise of co.dot, Joe Brush decided he couldn’t jump around on a stage anymore. The result is a new sound and a new band, Vapor Lounge.
Tapping the spirit of the shoegaze era Giant Drag have released one of the year’s most beguiling debuts. And in frontman Annie Hardy they have a rock icon in the making.
The perfect pop record: it’s an elusive goal. Some people say Pet Sounds, others any one of a rake of great singles from the collected works of Abba. In either case, they wouldn’t be far wide of the mark. But the magic pop gene also disports itself in all sorts of musically diverse situations, from ‘We Are Family’ by Sister Sledge, through ‘Perfect’ by Fairground Attraction, to ‘There She Goes’ by the Las.
The Last Of The High Kings (Directed by David Keating. Starring Jared Leto, Catherine O’Hare, Gabriel Byrne, Colm Meaney, Lorraine Pilkington, Emily Mortimer, Christina Ricci.)
Thus far reviewers have been foaming at the mouth trying to describe what an ungainly and unprecedented enterprise is The Raven, but Reed has always been at his best when there’s a thread to his threnodies, from New York to Berlin.
Along with thousands of other ex-pats, Ash singer/guitarist Tim Wheeler has made the Big Apple his home. He explains why he fell in love with the city.
Though her hippyish sensibilities are a throwback to the flower-power era, Florence Welch - aka Florence And The Machine - is one of the year's most hyped new artists. She talks about domestic violence, Andy Warhol and why sometimes hangovers can be good for you.
Marriage and babies have given The Dandy Warhols a fresh perspective on life. But they aren't ready to turn their back on sleazed-up rock'n roll just yet
A unique blend of domestic and international talent, Other Voices is the brainchild of Philip King. The new series is, he believes, the most ambitious yet.
Cinematic weirditude! arbus-like photography! theoretical physics! as Paul Nolan discovers, it’s definitely not only rock’n’roll for Hope Of The States, the Chichester band with a certain Westmeath connection.
Cinematic weirditude! arbus-like photography! theoretical physics! as Paul Nolan discovers, it’s definitely not only rock’n’roll for Hope Of The States, the Chichester band with a certain Westmeath connection.
Richard Linklater’s swooning 1993 romance for the Douglas Coupland generation is one of those movies you just succumb to, or you don’t, and I’m militantly entrenched in the former camp...
MAZZY STAR are still going strong, but HOPE SANDOVAL has also got a side project up and running. She tells NICK KELLY all about
HOPE SANDOVAL AND THE WARM INVENTIONS and her collaborations with everyone from The Chemical Brothers to Bert Jansch
the poet Allen Ginsberg died at his East Village home in New York on Saturday, 5th April, just two months short of his 71st birthday. After more than four decades of constant, and often controversial, conflict with such repressive figures as J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro and Newt Gingrich, liver cancer finally succeeded where they had always failed in silencing the notoriously outspoken writer and self-confessed beat-hip-gnostic-imagist performance poet.
A stone’s throw from Hollywood, Santa Monica is a mecca of laid-back cool. ANNMARIE CULLEN of Saucy Monky gives us the lowdown on where to eat, shop and how much to tip – and offers some pointers on getting the most out of LA’s much maligned, but surprisingly efficient, public transport system.
Moviehouse catches up with heartthrob superstar Leonardo Di Caprio, fresh from back to back movies and determined to better known as an actor than a celebrity.
Unlike Dublin, London and occasionally Paris, Berlin hasn’t yet succumbed to the increasing pace of modern life and become a stressful, impersonal, and overpriced capital. words: Paul Walsh
As both the vocal and focal point of The Radio, Caroline Lee Baker dresses tomboy by day, black clad bohemian by night. But for the HP fashion extravaganza she goes for an all-out homage to 60s style icon Twiggy. Later for those heels though.
A New Jersey-ite Eurocentric who mixes the buttoned-up gravitas of Dusty Springfield and Karen Carpenter with the lush orchestral tapestries of Bacharach and Spector. A Girl Called Eddy’s bohemian rhapsody is well worth acquainting yourself with.
Forget Rod, Emu and gottles of geer david strassman s ventriloquism is the missing link between rock n roll and Bill Hicks. barry glendenning meets the
puppet master. Pix: cathal dawson.
When not touring with Republic Of Loose, Mick pyro is free to kick back in his basement pad in a 1960s Swedish-style Terenure house, where he indulges his love of CDs, books and movies – and ponders the aesthetic similarities between Shakespeare and hip hop.
Ronnie Wood reveals that his autobiography, a rather entertaining account of his hair-raising life as the 'new boy' in the Stones, was a toil of love to write.
He might not have been the first rock n roller but he came pretty damn close. And in the success-through-excess stakes no-one could rival Rimbaud. PETER MURPHY savours a revealing new biography of the wild child
As Beck contemplates a belated sequel to Odelay, feel free to ask him any old question you like – just as long as it isn’t about that recent break-up with his long-time girlfriend. Oh, and make sure you don’t have the sniffles. Nadine O’Regan packs a hankie
Author Daniel Pinchbeck discusses psychedelic drugs and shamanism as potential tools for the evolution of consciousness – catalysts of change in our age of violence and ecological meltdown.
Metallica have emerged as the most popular metal band in Ireland to judge by their showing in the chart of the one hundred best metal tracks of all time as chosen by the readers of Hot Press and the listeners to 2FM’s increasingly popular Metal Show.
Catherine Hardwicke won the Sundance best director award for Thirteen, her controversial and unflinching depiction of teen queen sex, drugs, shoplifting and self-harming. Moviehouse meets the director and co-star Holly Hunter.
They may be nothing more than a tribute band but if so, they re a damn good one. JACK L and his BLACK ROMANTICS have been unanimously lauded for their Jacques Brel-inspired Wax album: The idea was to bridge the gap between Brel and Scott Walker. Now Jack L himself talks to JOE JA
Craig Fitzsimons meets Jimmie Dale Gilmore, possessor of a unique high ’n’ lonesome voice and yet another great product of the Lone Star State who, belatedly, is
experiencing a modicum of stardom himself.
So what does the arab world really make of Saddam Hussein and the threat of war? En route to Baghdad, Peter Matthews stops off in Amman, Jordan and hears the word on the street.
Q: Which top Irish quiz-masters’ pathological obsessions include Something Happens, Shamrock Rovers and the amount of shopping days left to the next Suede gig? A: George “You Started, So I’ll Finish” Byrne
With his pounding third novel, The Rooms, Declan Lynch has written one of the books of the year – a driven story of love, lust and alcohol that introduces one of the great anti-heroes of contemporary fiction.
They're fronted by a dead ringer for Xena, Warrior Princess; they've just won the Heineken Hot Press Best New Band Award; and, like inbreeding, they're big in Alabama. They're junkster, and here, deirdre o'neill and graham darcy tell jackie hayden exactly what they've been up to since they first "trespassed" on the American Dance Charts.
White English writer WILLIAM SHAW spent months in South Central LA documenting the lives of would-be rap stars and the young men fighting to survive in the ghetto. His book, Westsiders, is the result. He spoke to PETER MURPHY
No, it's not the overworked Hot Press subs finally snapping beneath the strain of a hectic production schedule but a finely argued debate by our finest writers on the phenomenon of naff. What is naff? Are you naff and if so how do you go about rectifying matters? Read on and be saved . . .
When writer and documentary film-maker Jon Ronson set out to discover the truth about the secret group which conspiracy theorists believe rules the world, he expected an interesting trip. What he didn’t anticipate was a brain-rattling, five year-long odyssey, by turns wacky and scary, that would bring him into contact with neo-nazis, religious fundamentalists, twelve-foot lizards, Mr burns from The Simpsons, David icke, peter mandelson and, ahem, Ian Paisley. Olaf Tyaransen hears the story that’s coming to a bookshelf and television screen near you. undercover pictorIal evidence: Cathal Dawson
Niall Stokes: As a band you took more responsibility with In Blue you have a greater level of input into the production and so on. Was that a strain when you were doing it?
Once he cleaned up in the charts, now he s cleaned up himself. Bruised but unbroken, MARC ALMOND is back and busy on all fronts. And, whisper it, there s even talk of SOFT CELL reforming. Interview: NICK KELLY.
She’s shaping up to be one of the break-out stars of 2009, with a number one album and a Mercury Prize nomination to her name. We catch up with Florence And The Machine’s Florence Welch, who talks about becoming an overnight sensation, reflects on her bizarre childhood and explains why her most controversial song really isn’t as contentious as it’s made out to be.
She learned her craft with the Wild Oscars and Kaydee, and more recently featured on the John Hughes album Wild Ocean. Now, Tara Blaise has taken flight with the release of her debut album Dancing On Tables Barefoot – a record that unveils an impressively free-spirit and a desire to live life to the full.
Roddy Doyle is one of Ireland's most important writers. Having made his initial breakthrough with The Commitments, he won the Booker prize in 1993 with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Now with his new novel Oh, Play That Thing – the sequel to the critically acclaimed A Star called Henry – he is back to one of his guiding passions, music, as he takes his protagonist Henry smart through the scrum of 1920s New York, and on to Louis Armstrong's Chicago.
Actress, writer, director, singer and not quite so archetypal French heroine Julie Delpy renders terms like ‘renaissance woman’ positively anaemic. Currently back on the map with Before Sunset, one of the cinematic highlights of the year, she talks art, sex romance and Gallic caricatures.
Tom Baxter's second album, Skybound, has just topped the Irish album chart. But it was a record that only got made after Baxter personally financed the sessions with his other talent of figurative art painting.
An extraordinary letter, written by Bob Dylan, offers a remarkable insight into the greatest songwriter of his generation. It also offers a hugely challenging perspective on the role of the artist.
Texas native Jonathan Caouette has caused a sensation in underground circles in the US with his brilliant and groundbreaking debut, Tarnation. A dazzling mix of autobiographical scenes, TV clips, movie footage and cutting-edge music, it might just be the best movie you’ll see this year.
The sheer quality, not to mention quantity, of the GALWAY ARTS FESTIVAL once more triumphed over inadequate facilities.
OLAF TYARANSEN reflects on a cultural banquet.
For many years a 'musician's musician', TOM PACHECO is now enjoying the commercial recognition he deserves thanks to a collaboration with Steiner Albrigtsen that's stormed its way to the top of the Norwegian charts. Here, the American singer-songwriter reflects on a remarkable career which has seen him hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and The Doors in New York, taking on the Nashville establishment and finally settling in Ireland where his star is also firmly in the ascendent. Interview: SIOBHAN LONG.
COLM O'HARE meets SCOTT YOUNG, father of Neil, and a renowned journalist, author and broadcaster in his own right. In this rare interview he talks about his best-known subject - his famous son.
They re calling it Little Africa, this area close to Dublin s city centre where the country s first real ethnic quarter is slowly taking shape. Peter Murphy reports on the birth pangs of a new kind of Irish nation. Photography: Peter Mathews
The mainman in Tenacious D and scene-stealer in High Fidelity, Jack Black is now at the heart of a box-office phenomenon in School of Rock. But who does he really want to be – Laurence Olivier or Ronnie James Dio? Tara Brady asks the tough questions.
The spectacle of U2 playing to 50,000 admirers with OASIS as their support band would seem to suggest that reports of PopMart's demise have been greatly exagerrated. And, behind the scenes, the mood is even more upbeat as the two bands revel in a mutual appreciation society.
Neil "Access All Areas" McCormick was with them in the dressing room, the mini-bus and the after-hours bar.
At the end of a year which saw (most of) Fleetwood Mac reunited, on CD and stage, drummer Mick Fleetwood recounts the story of a legendary band and the making of a classic album – Rumours.
Over the past decade or so, Will Self has remained one of the most fascinating, infuriating and downright provocative writers in contemporary literature. Now, following the publication of his typically inventive and challenging new book, Dr Mukti and other Tales of Woe, the perennially combative author gives Hot Press the low-down on the perils of psychiatry, his relationship with ultra-controversial artist Sebastian Horsley, and that memorable showdown with Paul Merton on Room 101.
from reagan to bush; from radio free europe to clear channel; from green to reveal; from the sfx to marlay park. REM call time out and Peter Buck fills in the gaps from 1983 to 2003. interview Peter Murphy
At the end of another eventful year, Andrea Corr takes time out to reflect on life, death, love, health, music and her role, off-stage and on, in the family that plays together. Interview: Niall Stokes
New album, new look, new attitude: having turned the big three-oh, DIVINE COMEDY's Neil Hannon says he's much more sure of his place in the world. "Basically, the one thing I have to offer humanity is a good time with interesting words," he tells Olaf Tyaransen. Divine camera intervention: MICK QUINN
Located in Dublin’s thriving Temple Bar area and owned by U2, The Kitchen is one of the hottest clubs in one of the most happening cities in Europe. Report: Colm O’Hare
It s re-introductions all round, as the Starman embarks on a hazardous solo mission. Stuart Bailie records him taking one giant leap for a man.
The Starman walks into a public bar in Chorlton and looks for a quiet spot. The old regulars at the back are nudging each other. They re sure that they recognise the face
and the style of a traveller who s been all the way up there and back.
By any standards, The Corrs are an extraordinary phenomenon. It won't be long before the combined global sales of their albums to date top the 20 million mark. In Ireland alone, by the end of the year, they will have sold over a million records - at which point they may well have established themselves as the biggest-selling Irish act of all time on home turf.
Meet Larry Harvey, the man behind burning man, the world’s most extraordinary festival, in which a whole city, run as a gift economy, springs up in the arid nevada desert to celebrate creativity, non-conformism and the healing power of fire.
Comic book artist and file clerk turned movie star, Harvey Pekar must be one of the most unlikely and somewhat reluctant celebrities of our time. An ordinary man whose work has produced extraordinary art, the anti-hero of American Splendour here talks about his friend Toby, Robert Crumb, James Joyce, David Letterman, fame and misfortune, surviving and more.
Don’t let her steal your heart away!
sheryl crow: Hot Press Readers’ Love Of The Year and Bob Dylan’s favourite singer-songwriter is the hottest new star in rock'n'roll. Helena Mulkerns charts the singular rise of Kennet, Missouri’s most celebrated slacker country queen.
She can't sit still. She has the attention span of a senile goldfish. And she has got some very strange personal habits. But Bjork is still one of the brightest and most compelling pop stars the nineties has produced thus far. LIAM FAY travels to darkest Blackpool for a close and often strange encounter with the Icelandic imp herself.
Greetings From LA
beck and tom petty get together in Los Angeles for an impassioned rap on songs, songwriting, showbiz, the Unplugged phenomenon and how too much music can boggle the mind. mark rowland listens in.
Brushing shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Bertie Ahern is currently all in a day’s work for hugely acclaimed singer-songwriter, Juliet Turner. But, as she tells Hot Press, the singer’s Northern Methodist upbringing has left her with a distaste for the spotlight and an overwhelming desire for creative and personal independence.
In a remarkable interview, the legendary David Kelly looks back on a long and adventurous career including parts in box office smashes, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Waking Ned.
One of the most distinctive and colourful characters in Dail Eireann, Junior Minister WILLIE O’DEA is also passionate about his commitment to reforming adult education. Here he talks to Joe Jackson about his brief, about Michael Noonan, Frank McCourt and “Stab City”, and about his recent outspoken comments on taxi drivers, political donations and other controversies. And, yes, he admits he did inhale and was “legless” the night he got elected
The relationship between drugs and creativity has always been a hotly debated subject. But narcotic indulgence has proven to be the downfall of many a gifted artist.
With his upwardly mobile CV and flash lifestyle trappings, VIP publisher JOHN RYAN looks like the personification of the Celtic Tiger at its most all-consuming. Not so, says the man himself, believing he has paid a high personal price for his business success. But can he take the flak as calmly as he dishes it out? JOE JACKSON finds out. Pictures: Colm Henry
When Nirvana exploded out of Seattle with the classic grunge album Nevermind, they were hailed as modern primitives, punk upstarts whose hard musical edge and authentic street style were the antithesis of the dominant ethos of corporate rock. Two years on however, their reputation as Rock 'n' Roll rebels is somewhat less secure. Bill Graham sifts through two new biographies of the band, and talks to Victoria clarke, the co-author of a third which has been effectively surpressed by the Nirvana 'corporation'.
Make no mistake about it, cocaine is more widely available in Ireland than at any time in the past. But is it the nasty, evil and dangerous drug of tabloid legend? In this Special Hot Press Report, Olaf Tyaransen goes behind the myths to uncover the history of, and the facts about, what has been dubbed the Champagne Drug. He talks to the Gardai and to dealers – and offers an honest assessment, from his own personal experience, of the drug that's widely used by musicians, media types, accountants, advertising execs and lawyers.
Saturday, July 13th, 1985 will go down in history as Live Aid Day, the extraordinary culmination of Bob Geldof's attempts to mobilise the international music industry behind urgently-needed famine relief in Africa. Among the stellar cast performing for 72,000 people at Wembley Stadium, London are U2, a band determined to rise to the occasion. Report: Neil McCormick
