The Crayon Set - O'Connell Street, 1916
★ ★ ★
This new Crayon Set track, released to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising, is a gritty stroll through contemporary Dublin, depicting its main thoroughfare as a sordid Irish answer to Nick Cave's Jubilee Street. (Except that, unless you consider slot machines and fast food the last word in iniquity, I'm not sure O'Connell Street lives up that description.) The video, meanwhile, splices stock 1950s footage with newsreel clips from the Irish Civil War. Other 1916 commemorations this weekend, no doubt, will be grander and more ostentatious. But few will prove quite this confusing.
Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman
★ ★ ★ ★
Ariana Grande's true genius may be for impersonating iconic female vocalists on late-night comedy shows, but the lead single from her third studio album proves the day job is still ticking over quite nicely too.
Bry - Don't Go Alone
★ ★
Q. How can an Irish singer- songwriter you've never heard of, who's never released a single or performed publicly, have 200,000 Twitter followers and half-a-million YouTube subscribers? A. Brian O'Reilly is a "YouTube personality". If you're under 25, you probably know this already. If not, nothing about what he does will ever make any sense. A 17-date UK and Ireland tour begins at The Academy, Dublin, April 21st.
Mike Posner - I Took A Pill In Ibiza (Seeb Remix)
★
As a songwriter, Mike Posner has worked with the likes of Justin Bieber and Maroon 5. But as a recording artist, whose last appearance in the charts was with Cooler Than Me in 2010, he was at risk of being written off a one-hit wonder. That was until the Detroit native decamped to the Balaerics, dabbled in recreational drugs and – hey presto – scored his first ever number- one single. There's a life lesson to be learned here, kids. The public likes terrible music.
