For quite a long while, there was only one leading man in Lisa Hannigan’s life. Damian Rice took most of the spotlight it must be said, but there was always a healthy respect among his audience for what Hannigan brought to the table. A large prescence on stage, albeit in a quieter way, ... read

There is an old adage that says if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. When it comes to music, however, a little streamlining can go a long way. Dublin quartet The Coronas have done little wrong since forming a few years back. Bigger gigs, bigger tours, higher chart positions all make ... read

If you thought that playing in front of 15,000 people at the MTV Europe Music Awards might phase a young, and truthfully until now pretty anonymous, band from Rochestown then you don’t know The Voodoos’ story to date.

There are bands who couldn’t catch a break, no mat... read

With a name like Darby Cicci, The Antlers multi-instrumentalist sounds as if he could be the quintessential Irish-Italian New Yorker. Speaking to Downtown from his home in Brooklyn, however, it comes as a surprise that Cicci actually hails from the Deep South.  Alabama in fact.

He... read

There was a time when Bell X1 must have looked at a former bandmate with no small measure of envy. Paul Noonan and co. were still building a fanbase slowly, gradually improving as songwriters and watching record sales travel marginally in the right direction. But at least it was the right dir... read

 When the producers of CSI: NY called their researchers into the office to brief them on an upcoming episode centred around a murder in the Big Apple on St Patrick’s Day, the knock-on, butterfly wing-like effect was the production of an excellent new Irish album.

... read

UCC’s musical smorgasboard, Fuaim, returns for an autumn series and once again provides an eclectic programme of music running around Cork between now and December.

There are one or two familiar faces playing in the form of Honor Heffernan (Oct 28) and Duke Special (No... read

In early 1990, two buses departed Cork from The Liberty Bar bound for Dublin. Around 80 Leesiders embarked on what was then a considerably longer journey, armed with a few pounds and pence, a handful of football jersies and a decent quantity of flagons of cider.

The destinat... read

In a moment of pure opportunism and audacity, The Minutes’ drummer emailed the main man at Rubyworks record label and told him that he had just sent him ‘the best album he had never heard’.
Rubyworks had recently set up an indie off-shoot to the main label, Model Citzen Record... read

I’ll Eat Your Face are something special. Not in a cuddley, ‘I want to bring you home to meet my parents’ kind of way. More a rip in the space time continuim, freak of nature sort of way. They’ve been around for a few years, but it was 2009’s Irritant that put th... read