Songs of the week
Come On Live Long – Speak Up
With a second album on the way, the Mogwai-referencing band have put on a coat of ambition with a new track Speak Up that across seven minutes, employs male/female vocals, upright piano, bells, synths and strings in an effort to push further into new territory and mark the band out. Speak Up speaks volumes.
Staring At Lakes - Consanguinea
Having released their debut album quietly last year, the Dublin six-piece are giving their best track, the contemplative epic strains of Consanguinea, another push through an intimate video by Kate Flo Murphy.
CC Brez – Her Alibi
While Republic Of Loose take an extended break that may or not last, founding member Cormac Breslin who definitely left the group, has taken up the moniker of CC Brez and delivered a debut EP with a lead track that is very reminiscent of the band's funkiest pop moments.
Night Trap – Someone Like You
Synthesizer-featuring music that takes its cue from the eighties era of synth pop isn't going anywhere soon. Dublin duo Ciaran Smyth and Jill Daly bonded over a love of Vince Clarke, Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. Someone Like You manifests those influences in a way that comes across like the best of New Order of that era with an added softness.
New artist of the week
Pranks
With the likes of Royal Blood and Slaves showing that economy doesn't necessary mean you can't deliver a bludgeoningly loud rock show, Dublin duo Pranks arrive with a similar idea. Micheal Sheil and Gearoid Connaughton's grunge-leaning rock music has the big riffs and metal chops of old, so much so that on debut single Ghosts, they sound like Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield letting loose on a Queens Of The Stone Age track. It's old school stuff done well. The band's debut EP is on Bandcamp.
Album of the week
Naive Ted - The Inevitable Heel Turn
Fans of hip-hop beats and electronics may find much to love in the the new album by the Limerick producer Naive Ted, an album of excitable Madlib-style instrumentals filled with dialogue samples (Tony Soprano, KLF on The Late Late Show), breakbeats, and madcap production. The whole thing is an alternative audio riot.
Video of the week
Róisín Murphy – Evil Eyes
The Irish sartorial singer's second self-directed music video is a subversive treat that takes advantage of the song's woozy synth atmospherics with a stylistic and colourful tale of a mother losing the plot.
"This character I have created goes mad,” says Murphy of the video. “Of course female hysteria is a cinematic cliche of massive proportions and I was able to find multitudes of reference particularly in Scandinavian films. Nothing about the visual aesthetic is 'Rock and Roll' and yet there is plenty of rebellion going on. I find it interesting to create videos that don't try to look like pop videos at all. Hopefully this will be a mysterious and disorientating experience for the viewer as we are not dealing in anything too concrete here, just ambiguity laced with black humour."
Director: Róisín Murphy
