This weekend, Dublin’s Marlay Park will see the third year of the Longitude Festival. Having won Best Medium Festival at the Irish Festival Awards two years running, it has set the bar high for 2015.
The Dirty Old Town Speakeasy returns, along with the Whelan’s Live Stage and its up-and-coming bands, while the Longitude Lounge and the Heineken Sound Atlas Tokyo Experience mark new additions to the festival.
However, it’s really all about the music, so in advance of the weekend, we’ve pulled our critics’ reviews of the main headliners’ albums to get you in the mood.
The Vaccines - Come of Age
“The London quartet led by Justin Young have been credited with singlehandedly restoring the garage to its rightful place as the most important room in the house. With their twanging guitars, pogo-stick rhythms and Young’s teen-wolf howl, the band have plundered myriad influences from rock’s attic to mix up their own vintage voodoo magic. The Vaccines Come of Age is packed with punchy pop hooks and riffs to make you go vroom, but is sadly a little thin on killer rock anthems.”
Kevin Courtney
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Hozier – Hozier
“There is a breach in the natural order when you realise Andrew Hozier-Byrne is just 24-years-old. To have such an understanding of the vital pulse points of Delta blues, soul and gospel is just downright unfair. Was the Wicklow man brought up on a diet of Atlantic and Stax records with a bit of the more primal Van Morrison thrown in? Because that’s sure what this debut sounds like... Debut albums have no right to sound like this.”
Brian Boyd
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Alt-J - This is all yours
“In the midst of riding the “awesome wave” generated by their Mercury Prize-winning 2012 debut, Alt-J lost a member when bassist Gwil Sainsbury left. There is no sense of fracture or loss on their second album, which sees the wonderfully weird Leedsband abundant with another batch of off-kilter indie ideas... All in all, you’ll be pushed to hear a more peculiarly diverse album this year.”
Lauren Murphy
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Caribou - Our Love
“Snaith’s trademark sensitive, soulful voice threads a poignant sense of vulnerability throughout the album, while the excellentSecond Chance, a wonderfully wonky number, features his compatriot Jessy Lanzataking the lead. Yet even with the proliferation of emotion and lyrical sensitivity, Snaith never loses sight of what he presumably set out to do: get the masses moving.”
Lauren Murphy
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Chemical Brothers - Further
“With their last album, 2007’s We Are the Night showing them to be at a bit of a creative impasse, there was a lot resting on this new Chemical Brothers release. No longer as crossover-friendly as they were in their prime, they have boldly done away with all the star vocalist collaborations, relying instead on their own instincts. This is a very impressive collection that is carried along with a stirring sense of velocity and momentum.”
Brian Boyd
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James Blake - Overgrown
“For his second album, James Blake has decided to do more with less. Gone are most of the traces of the dubstep genes that initially defined him and his debut album. In their stead, Blake has made the songs and not the sounds the focus of attention. And he succeeds because Overgrown is full of strong, sensual, timeless songs about love, life and loneliness. Blake doesn’t need electronic bells, whistles or whirrs...”
Jim Carroll
