Yet another mighty fine discovery from Dublin, Pillow Queens new single Handsome Wife comes from their upcoming debut album In Waiting (due 25th September). Very excited to announce that we’ve signed a deal with Stargazer Records who will co-release our upcoming album, details of which will be released very soon. We’re super excited to work with Stargazer and we can’t wait to share the album with you.
Powerful, emotive indie rock can all too easily stray into the territory of the overwrought and the over melodramatic, and while this is the arena that the four-piece walk in, they tread carefully and confidently imbuing the single with a bruised tenderness and some crunchy grungy guitar lines that steer it well clear of any false steps.
The Band:Cathy, Pam, Rach & Sarah
‘In Waiting’ the debut album from Pillow Queens is out September 25th –
Dublin band Fontaines D.C. have shared a second single from their upcoming second album A Hero’s Death. Powered by a descending bassline played high on the neck and slashing guitars, “I Don’t Belong” is a brooding, smoldering track that owes just a little to Joy Division. It’s the opening song on the album and you can listen below. A Hero’s Death is out July 31st via Partisan Records.
The new album from Fontaines D.C.—‘A Hero’s Death’—arrives July 31. Available on deluxe gatefold 2x 180g vinyl, limited edition stormy blue vinyl, standard black vinyl, two pocket wallet CD, limited edition cassette, and MP3, lossless or 24-bit WAV digital album. Each album purchase comes with an instant grat download of “A Hero’s Death” (the single), and the full digital album to be delivered on release day.
Barely a year after the release of their hugely acclaimed debut album ‘Dogrel’, which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and Album of the Year 2019 at both BBC 6Music and Rough Trade record store, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have returned with an intensely confident, patient, and complex follow up album. ‘A Hero’s Death’ arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful – a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty.
Silverbacks are the latest in the lineage of exciting new post-punk bands coming out of Dublin. But “Drool” is something slightly different than we’ve heard from them before, less hurtling breakneck energy and more depressive indie-rock reflection. The simultaneous slackness and precision of its mechanistic drumbeat and interlocking pinprick riffs is more Pinback than Parquet Courts, Kilian O’Kelly’s detached vocals painting a picture of a man just trying to get by in less than ideal circumstances. “Can’t you see/ It does exactly what it says on the box,” he sings, but Silverbacks continue to surprise and delight even as they look to the past for inspiration.
Silverbacks have, in some form or another, been a band for a while already. In some ways the project goes back almost two decades, to when Kilian and Daniel wrote songs together as kids. Though born to Irish parents, the brothers partially grew up in Brussels, attempting to write music that sounded like the Strokes. In college, the O’Kelly brothers met future members Emma Hanlon (bass/vocals) and Peadar Kearney (guitar), who would eventually lead them to Wickham. It wasn’t until that lineup was solidified that Silverbacks became more of a serious endeavor for all involved.
In the last two years, Silverbacks were more or less born in earnest, becoming what they are today — a band with late ’70s art-rock and punk and ’90s indie in its DNA, all of it tangled and then burst back open by their three-guitar arrangements. They began releasing new singles: “Just For A Better View,” “Dunkirk,” “Just In The Band.” Arriving across 2017 and 2018, each was infectious and sardonic and vivid in its own way — particularly “Dunkirk,” which took its name from the simple fact that Daniel had just gotten home from seeing the movie when Kilian played him the demo. The title subsequently inspired an imagined scene of a man in the near future having a midlife crisis in a beach resort built on a former warzone.
There’s a rawness and occasional ferocity throughout Fad, balanced with talk-sing observations and then deeply catchy choruses. Kilian, who was recently studying for a PhD in music composition, colours at the edges of the songs, guitar lines like liquid metal swirling around either the rough-hewn distortion or pop-minded songwriting. And it’s hard to think of many current guitar bands who make such vital use of three guitars. Everything in Silverbacks is economical — their guitar arrangements are still carefully interlaced, all those notes firing off each other just adding a new texture of melodic information to each track.
Big news! We’re very happy to announce that our debut LP ‘Fad’ will be released on July 17th on Central Tones. Watch the video for the lead-in single ‘Muted Gold’ You can learn a little more about ‘Fad’ and the songs on it.
Silverbacks – Drool /Sirens 7inch vinyl on Nice Swan Records
“Muted Gold” — the last addition to the album, and their latest single Silverbacks is released today — is indicative of sonic changes they want to explore. The O’Kellys want to open the songwriting process up more; Daniel wants Hanlon to sing more songs. (She already takes lead on two Fad tracks.) They’re all interested in complicating their established template — more dissonance, more percussion, indulging their “Talking Heads side.”
2020 has been a string of cancellations so far, but be sure to mark July 17th in your calendar since that’s the day Silverbacks release their debut album “Fad” via Central Tones. Daniel O’Kelly (vox, guitars), Kilian O’Kelly (guitars, vox), Emma Hanlon (bass, vox), Peader Kearney (guitar) and Gary Wickham (drums) use their time on the record to dissect the pop culture that consumes our every waking moment. Silverbacks has supported Irish rock darlings Girl Band on their sold-out U.K. tour, and seem destined to amass the same cult-like following. The Dublin five-piece brings together the goofiness of Pavement and the guitar frenzy of Car Seat Headrest at their best.
Aoife Nessa Frances’ debut album Land of No Junction, one of the few good things to come out of 2020, doesn’t feel like a first record. With her breezy early ’70s sound, the rich timbre of her voice and atmospheric production, she possesses a world-weariness that few other newcomers can evoke. Frances recorded the LP at Oxford Lane Music Society Studio in Ranelagh, Dublin, accompanied by Brendan Jenkinson (keyboard, engineering and mixing), Brendan Doherty (percussion) and Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (strings). Land of No Junction actually gets its name from Frances’ mishearing of Nugent’s boyhood trips to Wales, she says, “passing through a station called Llandudno Junction… Land of No Junction later became a place in itself. A liminal space – a dark vast landscape to visit in dreams.”
Blow Up’ by Aoife Nessa Frances
Directed by Anna McCarthy
‘Geranium’ by Aoife Nessa Frances
Video by Cáit Fahey & Anna McCarthy
Taken from the album ‘Land of No Junction’ released January 2020
The new album from Fontaines D.C. ‘A Hero’s Death’—arrives July 31st. Available on deluxe gatefold 2x 180g vinyl, limited edition stormy blue vinyl, standard black vinyl, two pocket wallet CD, limited edition cassette, and MP3, lossless or 24-bit WAV digital album. Each album purchase comes with an instant great download of “A Hero’s Death” (the single), and the full digital album to be delivered on release day.
Barely a year after the release of their hugely acclaimed debut album ‘Dogrel’, which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and Album of the Year 2019 at both BBC6 Music and Rough Trade record store, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have returned with an intensely confident, patient, and complex follow up album. ‘A Hero’s Death’ arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful – a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty.
Releases July 31st, 2020, “A Hero’s Death” taken from the forthcoming album out 31st July on Partisan Records.
Here’s a small EP of old demos we’ve put together for your listening pleasure. The EP will be up for a limited time only.
All money received from “Woh Nelly Demo” purchases will go to The Irish Cancer Society, who had to make the difficult decision to cancel all Daffodil Day events for 2020 amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Bandcamp are doing a great thing in supporting independent artists and musicians and we’re big fans of everything they do. Please go support your local bands and artists in this difficult time for everyone.
Dublin art-punks Silverbacks stomp back into action in 2018 with the release of their new single “Dunkirk” on June 15th through their own PK Miami Records.
Underpinned by an insistent, nagging bassline and creepy crawly guitar lines, it provides the ideal vehicle for frontman Daniel O’Kelly’s stream of consciousness ramblings about martial strife, the perfect sandcastle and spotting a con artist when he sees one.Produced by Girl Band’s Daniel Fox, the track lurches forth, pressure building from the undulating backbeat and layers of skronking guitars accenting Daniel’s increasingly frazzled yelps before finally collapsing into a sugar sweet coda. Indie kids no more, Silverbacks mean business and ‘Dunkirk’ is a powerful first move.
Dublin-based five-piece Silverbacks have slowly been releasing songs throughout the last three years. This past May, they shared the utterly infectious “Pink Tide,” and in 2018 shared further two singles: “Just In The Band,” and “Dunkirk.” These plus 2017’s “Just For A Better View” were produced by fellow Dubliner and Girl Band’s bass player Daniel Fox.
Although they promised their debut album would be out by the end of this year, we still don’t have any news on that front yet. But Silverbacks are ready to share another single, and they’re doing so with another Fox collaboration called “Sirens.” This one proves just as irresistible as the other tracks, and in the way this one utilizes a propelling bass-line, it feels like a grittier take on the B-52’s deep-cut “Give Me Back My Man.” In theory, the use of three different guitars could be a bit overwhelming, however this seamless execution just proves that Silverbacks are focused and ready for bigger things.
Silverbacks are so indebted to LCD Soundsystem that James Murphy just took their TV away. In fairness, the Irish band acknowledge their influences here, and even ask the band not to sue.
Our video for the album version of “Liberty Belle” is out today. The Dublin punk outfit, who released their acclaimed debut album ‘Dogrel’ last April, take stock of their hugely successful 2019 in the new visuals. Following the group out on the road, the video intersperses shots of backstage antics with ferocious live performances from the past year – including last month’s sold-out Dublin homecoming. The crowd is also captured on 35mm film.
We wanted to make this video as so much has changed and it’s been so long since we made the original one. “Liberty Belle is a lament to the death of old Dublin, written by people who couldn’t afford the new one,” says frontman Grain Chatten of the track.
This new release comes after Fontaines D.C. confirmed that they’ve finished recording their second album, which they’ve said was inspired by The Beach Boys. “We did it all in October. That’s been my real favourite moment of 2019, making the new record,” said guitarist Carlos O’Connell.
The musician went on to reveal that the upcoming LP would be “very different, both musically and lyrically” to its predecessor.
The debut album from The Murder Capital in a the rather nice looking rust marbles vinyl pressing. ‘When I Have Fears’ .There’s a whole raft of very decent bands heading over from Ireland at the moment who are, we hate to pun ‘gonna be big’. Dublin’sThe Murder Capital are, at the moment in the same whisper as Fontaine’s DC, Just Mustard, Thumper and Inhaler.
But they’re by no means all the same in sound. We first saw The Murder Capital on a very cold night at The End Of The Road Festival in September, not knowing what the band were about. They instantly resonated, coming on to sirens blaring and the audience didn’t know what hit them. Live, their sound is big, it’s captivating and it stays with you. And we weren’t disappointed
We eagerly looked forward to their debut “When I Have Fears”. Even though we’d discovered them in January, by August there were still only a couple of songs on Spotify to listen to so an air of mystery remained.
The result has been just as huge as the hype surrounding Fontaine’s DC’s Dogrel. But this isn’t about all these Irish bands sounding the same. The Murder Capital have made something much more dark, harrowing and passionate. More Is Less begins like Sonic Youth’s Tom Violence.Not a bad thing indeed.
A similarly distorted guitar, dripping with sadness and chilling. Pounding the lyrics ‘more more more, more is less’ give vibes like a protest song but with more amped up romance. Always the song that stood out in live shows, Green and Blue makes an apocalyptic sound of romantic devastation and destruction with Interpol style guitars bass and drums, but darker and more post-punk -if you can imagine that.
It’s as if everything is going on around us but somehow it’ll all be ok. The haunting ‘I failed you’ makes us imagine a camera drawing out of an unlit room as someone is left alone and devastated in the darkness. It all builds up to Slowdance I and Slowdance II. The meat of the album and a duo of songs to get completely lost in. In a live setting these two songs play as one single entity; one half with lyrics (Slowdance I) and one
half instrumental (Slowdance II).
Slowdance II is where it really kicks in. Dark and dreamy, this is the fulcrum where you immerse yourself in layers of sound. The most melancholic memory of romantic fuzz. It’s dramatic and hazy and seductive and epic and takes your breath away. You wonder how on earth they can top it.
Feeling Fades is a track that’s been available to listen to since we first discovered them. It ends with a dry shouted la la la la la la la la la and seems to poke fun at the song as it disintegrates, like light falling into a black star. Final track Love Love Love is already a personal favourite. Dark and moody, lurking and devastating, alarms sirens, cinematic and lush. ‘In the rain the romance lay, maybe in the rain, the romance will say goodbye’
When I Have Fears is such a raw record, both emotionally and sonically that we don’t want to be controversial or opinionated or seen as rooting for the underdog but it’s just knocked Dogrel from among our Album of the Year spot. It really is that good.
With When I Have Fears sees The Murder Capital have released an insane debut album which will only open doors for the band. The Dublin post punks are seriously a band to keep a close eye on, as with the release of their debut album it’s almost certain that 2020 is going to be massive for them.
The Fat Angel Sings 