Fontaines D.C. perform 3 songs from their new album A Hero’s Death live, for a World Cafe At Home Session with contributing host, Stephen Kallao. Recorded in August 2020.
Irish
Record Review: Fontaines D.C. “A Hero’s Death”
Heady, funny, and fearless, the Dublin band’s second album is a maudlin and manic triumph, a horror movie shot as comedy, equal parts future-shocked and handcuffed to history.
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse do not thunder and gallop. They lurch and stagger, weighed down by the grim burden of their brief. Slowly, they stalk humanity with an Amazon Prime package of grief, war, and pestilence, their approach suggested only by the mechanized drone of social media and cable news. When the end finally comes, it’s all so quotidian and tedious; a whimper, not a bang. All around us, the party is ending, and Fontaines D.C. are the final house band. The setlist is A Hero’s Death.
Slinking seeming fully-formed from Dublin’s working-class neighborhood The Liberties, the five-piece established themselves as bona fide inheritors of a centuries-long socialist-bohemian tradition on 2019’s post-post-punk document Dogrel, an album that weaved together the enduring groove of Gang of Four and the psychically dislocating poetry of Allen Ginsberg with unnervingly precocious aplomb. Dogrel was a shouty revelation—part early Mekons, part cider-addled James Brown & the JB’s—all of it suggestive of a crucial talent abuzz with live-wire intensity.
Lankum’s exlusive streaming show is August 15
Music Review: Joshua Burnside’s brilliant “Into the Depths of Hell “
Source: Folk Radio UK
We were recently treated to two new songs from the Northern Irish singer songwriter extraordinaire Joshua Burnside, the confessionals ‘Whiskey Whiskey‘ and most recently ‘The Only Thing I Fear‘. Songs which combined vivid imagery and powerful lyricism dealing with our darkest thoughts, irrational fears and insecurities. They offered a glimpse of an artist at a personal high in his aesthetic pursuit, laying bare his innermost thoughts, dreams and wishes.
As he exposed the crazy fragility of humanity on ‘The Only Thing I Fear’, he plunges us even deeper on his latest single and our Song of the Day ‘and you evade him/born in the blood‘ the release of which has been coupled with the announcement that a new album is on the way – Into the Depths of Hell is to be released on 4th September. The accompanying video reveals just how deep Burnside can plunge his listener…from the off, a synthetic gauze-like surface of micro blips present the ticking passing of time, unabated and unstoppable with found-sounds that unravel like a late-night cold sweat.
One excerpt, from which the song takes part of its title, is an interview featuring Richard Burton during which he talks of his battle with alcoholism…”you evade him… you evade him… But one of these days unless you’re careful, he’s gonna nail you right on the chin and down you go.” That opener, coupled with the visuals, leave you with an unnerving sense of standing on the precipice…witnessing the rolling cycle of struggle and dealing with your own inner turmoil that’s trying to make sense of it all. Those first opening lines from Burnside say it all…
“I was a liar
when I said
I am not afraid
I am”
Joshua released his debut album ‘Ephrata’ in 2017 via Quiet Arch Records. Filled with deeply personal stories of characters he had encountered and hearts that had been broken, it illustrated a man at odds with the world before him. A critical and commercial success, the unique mix of Irish traditional, European folk and Americana music that fuelled the emotional core of his inaugural release earned Joshua the ‘Best Album’ award at the Northern Irish Music Prize.
After his time spent touring ‘Ephrata’ around the UK and Ireland, Joshua returned home to his native Belfast, determined to capture the sounds, sights and stories he encountered on his travels. A deluxe EP (‘Wear Blue Bells In Your Hat If You’re Goin’ That Way’) and live album (‘Live At The Elmwood Hall’) emerged earlier this year as he continued to experiment in his studio. Most recently he shared songs that he’d first heard at the Sailortown Folk Club in Belfast through his more traditional EP Far O’er the Sounding Main.
Burnside appears to be on something of a creative high…be sure to follow him on his journey ‘Into the Depths of Hell’.
http://www.joshuaburnside.com/
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“Catch yerself on!” The Derry Girls zoom with Saorise Ronan for Comic Relief
Saoirse Ronan joined the cast of Derry Girls in a hilarious sketch for RTE’s Comic Relief which aired in Ireland on Friday night.
For the sketch that aired on RTE in Ireland on Friday, the stars of Derry Girls – Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Nicola Coughlan, Dylan Llewellyn, and Louisa Harland – join together on Zoom in anticipation of a meeting with Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan.
Naturally, there’s great excitement amongst the gang, especially since, according to Saoirse-Monica Jackson, this could be a great opportunity to break away from their Derry Girls characters.
“It’s just everybody thinks we’re exactly like our characters in Derry Girls,” she says, sounding an awful lot like her character Erin on the hit show. “We need to prove that we’re serious, intelligent young women.”