This Belfast-based Irish noise-punk 4-piece formed in late 2019. Offering venomous hip-hop-inspired vocals that are asuncompromising as the guitars are unforgiving, layered on a rhythm section that draws as much from left-field electronica and techno as it does from post-punk heroes of the late 70s.
Oregon-based songwriter Anna Tivel’s newest album Outsiders starts with a lens so wide that we have left the planet to look back from a great distance at the turmoil and beauty of our shared humanity. From there, the lens pulls close and unfolds in a gripping collection of stories so often ignored. Tivel’s flawed and honest characters move through a landscape of hurt and loss, of small triumph and big love. In 11 songs full of recognition, veracity and hope, Tivel’s watchful and empathetic eye details the undeniable ache of living.
Outsiders, look up / The night is dark but brilliant and it turns out we are not so different
Recorded almost entirely live to tape in Rock Island, IL with producer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Leonard and engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens), the album is a truly collaborative exploration. Tivel gathered the same vibrant group of friends from her acclaimed record, The Question, which NPR heralded as “one of the most ambitious folk records of 2019.”
“We holed up together in a little house a few miles from the studio,” she says, “walked there every day to sink deep into the music. No one had heard the songs beforehand, and I would play each one sitting on the floor trying to convey the gut feeling. Then we’d face each other in a circle and feel our way through, working to find the heart of each song in a few takes. Shane brings this layer of uninhibited magic to every session, setting the stage for everyone to listen deep and react with open doors. He gives himself as fully to sonic atmosphere as I do to words and I have a great amount of trust in his vision and admiration for the care he takes with the world of each song.”
The constraints of analog recording fostered a rawness and immediacy in the final tracks. The arrangements on Outsiders are spacious and full of intrigue, drawing you into the cinema of Tivel’s lyrics. The title track opens the album with a meditation on the first moon landing. “I wrote it sitting on the floor in front of the TV between fragments of an Apollo 11 documentary,” she recalls. “The news was feeling especially dark, full of pain and distorted truths, and watching all that incredible footage of human hope and achievement hit me so hard. For just that one moment in the great upheaval of the times, everyone paused together to witness something new and full of wonder.”
The second track “Black Umbrella” is a winding story that follows a small-town robbery and a bystander who tries to help only to fall under the weight of misconception and old, broken systems. “It’s a song about all the ways we fail to really see each other,” Tivel shares, “about poverty and desperation, race and power, history, opportunity, and otherness.”
While writing the album in 2019-20, Tivel found herself circling back again and again to this idea of otherness. “The deep division and ugly rhetoric being amplified–especially in the US–seeped into everything I wrote. I kept wanting to explore this feeling of being unseen, profoundly lonely and disconnected, and how it affects our perception of the world and our place in it,” she says. “Outsiders is an album about looking more deeply into ourselves and each other, really trying to see and examine the internal and external forces that keep us from connecting in real ways and the forces that draw us together.”
Throughout her work, Tivel has emphasized storytelling and this album is no exception, building on the strength of her ability to observe and reflect with a clear-eyed empathy. Inspired by authors from Steinbeck to Morrison, Didion to Dubus, she imbues her songs with attentive detail and a dreamlike quality that leaves the ordinary feeling both palpable and poetic. “Tivel’s characters are common but unforgettable,” NPR’s Ann Powers writes, “Her images linger, and become populated with the energy of the real.”
Outsiders will be released by Mama Bird Recording Co. on August 19th.
Hundreds of thousands of miles away, the endless expanse of a dream / Pausing the burning of cities to say we are beautiful when we believe
“One of the most immediately captivating components to The Deadlians’ musicianship is the mesmerising combination of punk and psych rock sensibilities steering beast-like tracks like Scumbag with an Ice Pop, and A Few Cans of Minerals. Those moments conjure the sweaty clubs of 1970s New York…” [Zara Hedderman in Totally Dublin]
Experimentation is at the core of Robocobra Quartet, whether it be in the fluid line-up (six musicians tagging in and out to make up the live touring quartet) or in their unique self-produced records made in their hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
These juxtapositions are just the beginning of the complex world of Robocobra Quartet – a band serious about their music but humorous in their approach, including members with no musical training alongside members with music conservatoire pedigree. The result is a collective of musicians inspired by Stravinsky and Dead Kennedys in equal measures. On stage, the band are protons and electrons circling drummer-vocalist Chris W Ryan; meticulous arrangements and on-the-spot improvisations hang on every word spoken, sung and shouted by Ryan. These words and rhythms are what propel the music of Robocobra Quartet forward and concoct a sound that is groove-driven but cerebral too, invoking the likes of Fugazi, Talking Heads and contemporaries such as Black Midi, Squid and BadBadNotGood.
The free nature of the band’s live shows led to them being embraced early on by jazz fanatics just as much as rock fans – once finding themselves in Europe touring a jazz club one night, a house show the next and a pop festival the night after that. These unmatched live performances often channel-hop from moments of joy and playfulness to periods of intense fury, earning the band invitations to Montreux Jazz Festival, Glastonbury Festival and as far as Inversia Festival in the polar north of Russia whilst receiving acclaim from the likes of The Quietus, MOJO, BBC 6Music and KEXP.
SWEETS is an alternative rock band from Limerick, Ireland. The band’s roots are firmly entrenched in Limerick’s prolific music scene and features members of much-loved, critically acclaimed acts Tooth, Giveamanakick, Windings & Japanese Jesus. Expect powerful, guitar-driven, hook-filled songs, laden with unexpected riffs, pounding rhythms and textured vocals that flips the riffy/post-hardcore/grunge sound on it’s head.
Long-time collaborators Liam Marley (Guitar/Vox) and Lorcan Bourke (Drums) had been writ- ing songs together for over ten years before joining forces with close friends Keith Lawler (Guitar) and Bertie Kelly (Bass) to form SWEETS in 2021. “It took a pandemic to finally get us together, it’s just felt like the right time.”
When asked to describe their sound, the members said that: “We grew up together as friends, as part of an incredible music scene and because of that formed our musical tastes together. We take influences from what resonates with us individually and it just comes out very naturally as a band then. We have a lot in common but it’s our individual tastes, experi- ences and influences that make the unique SWEETS sound.”
The band plans to release a series of singles over the coming months with accompanying videos, culminating in a full length LP in 2023.
The Kates are Liz Clark, Mide Houlihan, Eve Clague, MaryBeth O Mahony and Paula K O Brien, a group of west Cork artists who celebrate the rock goddesses that have come before them, torching a trail through a man’s world.
They only perform songs written or performed by women, from Patti Smith and Courtney Love to Sharon Van Etten and Lizzo.
Viva le revolution!
Molly O’Mahony has spent much of the last decade writing and performing with art-folk group Mongoose. She returned to her home place of west Cork in March of 2020, and against the backdrop of the unfolding pandemic, began work on her first solo collection of songs.
During lockdown, she bounced many ideas off her two musician siblings Matilda and Fiachra and collaborated on arranging a number of covers with them. This period of time and these collaborations greatly informed her own songs, which were recorded over the summer of 2021, and which her siblings played a crucial role in arranging and playing on.
Molly released two of these songs over the latter half of last year, Remember To Be Brave and Brother Blue.
Her debut album is scheduled for October 2022
As CIGF 21 reached its conclusion, the bard of the Lee, John Spillane sent a rapt audience out of Spillers Lane into in the dusk with his songs still ringing around the streets. It was an event so enchanting that we are returning to Spillers Lane at the height of summer with acclaimed and eclectic collective Dog Tail Soup.
This is going to be one of the most memorable events of the year as we enjoy one of west Cork’s best musical projects in the historic and atmospheric courtyard at the centre of our town.
Dogtail Soup is an eclectic and flavourful musical stew made by carefully simmering Camilla Griehsel (Swedish World Music diva) with Maurice Seezer (Twice Golden Globe nominated Film Music composer), adding a pinch of Paul Tiernan (International troubadour, pillar of West Cork’s favourite band, Interference), a sprinkling of Anthony Noonan (drummer for Roy Harper with extra dulcet tones), a cupful of John Fitzgerald (bass and all known instruments… last seen touring with Gilbert O’Sullivan) and an occasional splash of James O’Leary (founding member of Interference on electric guitar).
Berlin based trio Yonder Boys are an Americana band, who while performing on traditional folk instruments, show great depth in variety of influences they bring to the genre. Traditional old-time sound can be mixed with rock, latin, pop and psychedelic influences.
The band features the singing duo of Jason Serious (USA -vocals, guitar) and David Stewart Ingleton (AUS- vocals, banjo) who have performed as support for Billy Bragg, The Wood Brothers, Timber Timbre, Other Lives, and Nathaniel Rateliff. Joining them is multi-instrumentalist Tomás Peralta (CHL-vocals, mandolin, lap steel, banjo, bass and more).
The Yonder Boys come from different continents and all met and live in Germany. Hence the name of the band: all three have ventured far from their homes to perform and live in Europe. Their self-titled debut EP came out in 2018 on Blue Whale Records, and their first LP “Acid Folk” was released on September 25, 2020.
Les SalAmandas, Julie O’Sullivan (Ireland) and Colyne Laverriere (France) is a new singing-songwriting act in the Irish music scene.