July 30th, 2010
Surreptitiously petitioning for Lindsay Lohan’s release, so you don’t have to. There’s such a gender imbalance in celebrity gossip, don’t you think? Female celebrities are subject to much deeper scrutiny than their male counterparts – their weight, their hair, their clothes, their partying, all of which are much more readily criticised. The “standard” for female [...]
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July 30th, 2010
I have to admit that I haven’t seen Toy Story 3 yet. While enjoying the original and its sequel, I never really got as emotionally involved as most people, and wondered where the third installment would have to go to pique my interest. In these days of high-octane thrills and unsettling mystery, I thought, how [...]
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July 26th, 2010
Like all drunken Irish balladeers, myself and my friends love a good yowling session of a Saturday night. At our most recent Singstar marathon, my cousin and I got up to sing Erasure’s A Little Respect, and were surprised (really, because we’re terrific singers) to get relatively low scores, until it occurred to us that [...]
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July 17th, 2010
There’s a band called Hamfatter, best known for stomping onto Dragon’s Den and wrangling £75k out of the dragons by playing their song Sziget as a marketing pitch. Sziget is a song about getting wrecked at the Hungarian uber-festival, and I bloody love it, because of the lyric… I’m at the front, right in the [...]
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July 16th, 2010
The best free n’ easy music downloads on the webbly. The fact that I’m at home, sick, should make me less bossy when it comes to music recommendations (all that consumption and pernicious rickets should put a halt to anyone’s gallop) but the unfortunate thing is, kids, I’m never off. And it’s not that I’m [...]
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July 14th, 2010
And with a name like that, he should be kept here, and all. Nu-folk’s smokin’ist talent, the wonderful Mr. Johnny Flynn, has just announced a number of gigs in September all about our fair isle, which will have to do until he’s made mandatory. He plays Auntie Annie’s in Belfast on the 17th, Academy 2 [...]
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July 12th, 2010
Sun shining through nasty leaden clouds. Your nice new maxi dress trailing in the mud. Crane flies sheltering under your chin. Caloo calay; it’s the Irish fucking summer, everyone! Us nice sorts at culch.ie understand that you deserve a scorcher, the kind of summer that’s stuffed with Soleros and beer gardens and the kind of [...]
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July 7th, 2010
Two from Friday, one from Saturday, folks; I have to be back at work on Monday morning, after all (not that I’m going to Oxegen in any sphere but spirit). Here’s my three cents for this weekend’s aural extravaganza! Friday – Lissie – 2fm/Hot Press Academy Stage … and for my money, the stage of [...]
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July 3rd, 2010
The demented drummer. The deep-thinking bassist. The “little pistol” of a frontwoman. The Joy Formidable might seem like a rock band made up of the usual suspects, but when culch.ie muscled in for a chat with Ritzy and Rhydian on their recent Irish tour, we were soon put right. Also about pop tarts, Australians, and [...]
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June 25th, 2010
Surreptitiously hacking into Kelsey Grammer’s Facebook account, so you don’t have to. Y’know when a girl says something bitchy about another girl and all the boys go, “Ah, them girls, they’re all so mightily jealous of one another. It is hate upon hate upon lipstick”? Well, generally, the boys are wrong. It’s not that girls [...]
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June 22nd, 2010
It’d make me a bit of a Bertie-socialist to complain about commercialism in music, wouldn’t it? As a part-time hippy (with foldaway bare feet), I’d like to waffle on that music needs to be free and unrestrained, and wafting meaningfully around city plazas in the summertime, but being mostly staid and sensible and stiletto-clad, I [...]
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June 20th, 2010
Living on the verges of the city, I rely heavily on public transport to get me in and out of gigs and other such entertainments. Having very sensitive ears, I rely heavily on my iPod to save me from the kind of toss they play on national radio and broadcast on public transport. Not that [...]
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June 19th, 2010
Y’know, I understand what it takes out of you, trying to make it as a musician. I’m of the artistic persuasion myself – I try to string art from stringing words together. It’s exhausting. It’s like living in an oven, baking endless cakes out of caviar and porcini that no one wants to eat because [...]
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June 16th, 2010
Mark Lanegan, him of Screaming Trees, Queens Of The Stone Age, Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, UNKLE and … well, “Mark Lanegan” fame, will grace us once again with his gravelly presence in August. Seeing as his last Irish show sold out in the time it takes to name all of his musical projects (the hardworking, livin’-the-dark-dream [...]
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June 13th, 2010
When people classify* We Are Scientists, it tends to be as indie rock, because God help us but we couldn’t be doing with calling them “pop rock”, now could we? “Pop rock” is what Pink is. “Pop rock” is how you dismiss everything Green Day have accomplished since 1992. Pop rock has become a derogatory [...]
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