They’ve recorded with Broken Social Scene and once shared a flat with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Now Toronto avant-rockers Metric are set to make a splash of their own.
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.
So, how was it for you? On reflection, 2003 was a good year but one that offered little in the way of genuine surprises. Not that we didn’t go looking for them. As always the hunt was on to find the next big thing, the one new act that would define 2003 in years to come.
She’s one of the sassiest, not to say iconic, frontwomen in rock. Up close however, Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O is just a big pussycat. Look, we’ve even made her cry.
From Sheffield via New York to Montreal, Stars vocalist Tarquill Campbell is happy to fetch up in a place where “loving The Smiths is not against the law, yet”.
Breathless, sexy, frantic – the album’s forty minutes include five minutes waiting around for a hidden extra track; don’t bother, it’s shite – Fever To Tell is a racket but an undeniably glorious one.
Having established their cult credentials with Turn On The Bright Lights, Interpol are back with a new album that looks like earning them a place at rock’s top table. New York City fop Sam Fogarino tells Colm O’Hare how they’re sharp-dressed for success.
Annual article: Bright young things like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen captured the HP critics’ hearts this year, though they somehow neglected Johnny Cash and Mark Lanegan...
The soundtrack for the previous Spiderman film had a strong thread of emo and hard rock running through it. This collection has moved more towards contemporary indie-rock.
Since the release of their sophomore album Antics late last year, New York goth-rock quartet Interpol have risen to the pantheon of great contemporary bands. In a rare in-depth interview, the group’s erudite frontman Paul Banks here discusses the making of Antics, their upcoming support slot with U2, the band’s peers in the NYC indie scene, The Strokes, Nirvana and David Lynch - and where one of the most acclaimed groups of recent years go to from here. Interview by Paul Nolan.
While women are still far from achieving equality of opportunity in music, the last thing women artists want – or need – is to be ghettoised, writes musician and journalist Kim V Porcelli. The point about the women who are at rock’s cutting edge – from Sinéad O’Connor through PJ Harvey to Peaches – is that they defer to no one in their pursuit of greatness.
Their special talent is the ability to Frankenstein together body parts too diseased for other bands to use, sew ’em together and cover over the cracks with heaped trowels of whiteface and panstick.
There are artists who operate as holistics and healers, lifting the spirit, rousing the body. Then there are the pathologists and post-mortemizers that map the anatomy of cancers.
Annual article: The Electric Picnic wasn’t just one of the musical events of the year; it also let us chow down and have a natter with some of the top pop combos of the day, including Bloc Party, Gang Of Four and New Order.
With a self-recorded and self-released album – called simply O – Damien Rice has emerged as a major force in Irish music. But that’s just the start of it: the record is now in the charts in both the U.S. and the U.K., and with the kind of momentum he has generated, the feeling is that it might just go all the way.
Champagne corks were popped last week as Snow Patrol joined that elite group of bands who’ve simultaneously topped the charts in Ireland and the UK. It’s all a far cry from the days when their fame was confined to the University of Dundee Students Union bar. Gary Lightbody takes time out from wowing the masses in Dublin and Belfast to tell Stuart Clark about their twisty and turny route to the top.
It's been over four intriguing years since Damien Rice's extraordinary debut album O was launched. That record went on to become a huge underground international hit, selling in excess of 2 million copies. Now his long-awaited follow-up – the similarly simply titled 9 – is finally ready to hit the shops. So how did Rice so successfully capture the collective imagination? And will the latest instalment in the Rice musical biography propel him to even greater heights? Hot Press talks exclusively to some of the key players in his remarkable rise and rise.
How The White Stripes turned the bare essentials into an essential noise, insisted that three is indeed a magic number and wound up becoming one of the most phenomenally successful rock acts in the world
After the rip-roaring success of last year's event, Music Ireland '07 has been extended to a three-day event, incorporating a dedicated student day on Friday October 5. Aimed primarily at second-level schools, the day is set to be one of the most educational and entertaining school tours in the country. For those wishing to follow a career in music, the show is a real treat.
Music Review | Live
26% | 7 Sep 2006
They said it couldn’t be done, but this year’s Electric Picnic achieved the impossible by being even more joyous, vibey and action-packed than its predecessors. Hot Press was in the thick of things as 200 acts and 30,000 music lovers descended on one very big house in the country.
