See the end of the post for the Weekly Playlist featuring all the tracks I loved this week.
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Smerz
Roll The Dice
Norwegian electronic duo’s second album Big city life is rooted firmly on an arch art-pop vibe, with woozy tracks drawing from electro, R&B, synth-pop, DIY pop, minimal, trance and casually spoken-sung vocal styles. When Smerz release music I am always interested in hearing what they’re putting down. As I make myself pick one track, today it’s ‘Roll The Dice’.
Saoirse Miller
All The Time
With a new song collaboration out this week with Rory Sweeney, ROIS and more, the recent release of ‘All This Time’, the latest single from Dublin artist Saoirse Miller is equally worthy of your ears – it shares the dreamy vibe of ‘Entrance Places’, with a more present shoegaze sonic style.
‘All The Time’ is soft at the edges but mighty in its peaks.
Miller wrote the song with Dublin producers Eoghan O’Dowd and Alex Gough, and the song is “about nostalgia, and missing people and moments from your past.”
At the time, I was feeling very lost and I didn’t really know what I was doing with myself. I felt like I had lost quite a few people from my life, and I was out on my own. The lyrics are quite melancholic, as I’m still trying to clutch on to people, and coming to terms that everything has changed.
Sonically, I was heavily inspired by trip-hop at the time. I was listening to a lot of Bowery Electric and Headache; I wanted to make something that was moody and nonchalant but also atmospheric. It was a challenge as I wanted to do something quite different from what I was producing last year, while still keeping it in my own world. We experimented with different synths, live drums, electric guitars and recorded our footsteps in the tiled reverb room in the studio. We just locked ourselves in a room for 2 days with no real plan, and this is what came out of it.
Romance
We’ll Always Have Paris
Romance’s new album Love Is Colder Than Death is yet another conceptual cinematic from the English producer, this time it’s actually film – noir which is the muse (previously it was the MOR pop ballads of Celine Dion)
Enjoy ‘We’ll Always Have Paris’ in all its elegiac ambient nostalgic swoon.
The album channels the existential dread and surreal detachment of haunted Los Angeles, the hot dry Santa Anas winds rattling through mountain passes – a world where, ‘no one is what they seem, and nothing is what it should be.’
Kean Kavanagh
Father Brown’s
Ahead of the release of The County Star on June 6th, we are really getting a sense of the changes evident in the music of Kean Kavanagh, with a deeper emphasis on his hometown upbringing and a trilogy of music videos starring Peter McGann as Pa Campion, a sad and now deceased GAA kit man (as we see in the Father Brown’s video).
‘Father Brown’s’ even finishes with a flourish of stirring uileann pipes.
It follows on from ‘The Whistle’, ‘A Cowboy Song’ and the non-album cover ‘The Portlaoise Queen’.
Laura Duff
Ramble
Limerick songwriter and musician Laura Duff’s debut album Sea Legs features introspective songwriting drawing from experiences of grief and being by the sea.
‘Rumble’ recounts the devastating everyday thoughts and feelings of losing a parent, and the questions that go unanswered.
“I was setting out to write Sea Legs in my Dad’s memory,” says Duff. “It was very intentional in that way. All of the lyrical context is based around that, and his life, as well as trying to maintain some level of communication. ‘Sea Legs’ is inspired by my experience of navigating everything that comes with losing a parent; dealing with grief as time passes, family relationships and the physicality of death.”
Laura Duff Tour Dates
- May 24th: Dolans, Limerick
- May 25th: Plugd, Cork
- June 8th: Galway Folk Festival
- June 12th: Anseo, Dublin
- June 15th: Doolin Folk Festival
Songs I also loved this week:
Also added to this week’s playlist:
- Bonniesongs – Olive Oil
- Madeline Kenney – Scoop
- A. K. Paul – Watchin’ U
- Barry Can’t Swim – About To Begin
- Pebbledash – Asha’s Waltz
- Sophia Kennedy – Imaginary Friend
- Daithí; Sinead White – Can’t Even Tell Me
- Błoto – Maczużnik
- Pye Corner Audio – Volcanic Rock
- Roman Flügel – Geht’s noch?
- Cerrone; Christine and the Queens – Catching feelings
- Joy Crookes – Carmen
- Badlands – Let You Fall Asleep
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
