“ROSE-mair-ee!” yells a sold-out Olympia along with Paul Banks, as the Morse-code bassline of ‘Evil” jitters away beneath. “HEAV-en re-STORES you in LIFE!” So, yes, onstage it looks like Interpol: five smart-suited gentlemen throwing rock shapes in a graveyard-mist fug that is ‘lit’ (if you can say that about a near-dark stage) in their trademark two colours, black and dark red. But turn around to face tonight’s all-singing, all-dancing crowd, and you could be at an Oasis concert circa Definitely Maybe.
Neil Young that is. Up and coming Dublin rockers Hal are earning serious kudos for their winning take on classic ’70s rock sounds. And despite dark murmurings of artistic plagiarism, they sure as hell aren’t about to apologise for it, as they tell Ed Power. Photography by Emily Quinn.
Travelling by first class train between Wales and London James Dean Bradfield did a surprising thing: he started working on his first solo album. The resulting record taps the Manic Street Preacher’s growing affection for his roots in the valleys.
Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo is one of rock’s great eccentrics. In an exclusive interview he talks about meditation, chastity and why ego is the enemy of art.
The first sci-fi cineplex
blockbuster of 1998
STARSHIP TROOPERS is directed by Paul Verhoeven from a book by noted sci-fi scribe Robert A. Heinlein. And it s either a mindlessly enjoyable special effects white-knuckle ride or dangerously subversive propaganda for right wing militarism. You decide: to Grok, or not to Grok?
Half Nelson reminds us how cool the independent sector used to be – two first-timers expand a 2004 short into a kick-arse screenplay, land the services of a super actor (Gosling) and end up with a dozen awards and an Oscar nod.
That kittenish sass that works so well on record - beating the boys at their own game, girly but authoritative, laughing and intelligent as jailbait - simply doesn’t carry live: it's too baby-powder-soft, has no sharp edges, nothing to punctuate the music
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.
The suspicion that The White Stripes are a conceptual prank masquerading as a rock group intensifies with each outing.
For their fifth dispatch, Jack and Meg contort their beaten up, gut-bucket blues into wrenching, subversive shapes. A feral heckle as much as a pop record, it flaunts its weirdness gleefully and capriciously.
In which your correspondent strongly retracts previously stated praise for the London underground, and celebrates the cavalier approach of the irrepressible Birr hurlers.
We’re not talking about prostitution here, just the prohibitive cost of contraception. The fact is that gratis contraception would probably save the State a lot of money in the long run – so let’s hear it for free sex…
