Even when he’s sitting on a comfy sofa, with a glass of iced water resting on a nearby table, David Gray’s overall demeanour seems taut, tense and not a little bit constricted. It was exactly the same over 20 years ago, when the UK singer-songwriter released his first pair of albums, A Century Ends (1993) and Flesh (1994), two
Oh, by jingo it’s a long way from working the Saturday night shift in his parents’ chip shop. Back when Paolo Nutini was a teenager in his hometown of Paisley, just outside Glasgow, he’d make a few bob serving up singles, doubles and a side order of crisp onion rings in Caselvecchi Café. And now? Well, now he’s sitting
There was a time when Elbow belonged to an anonymous bunch of UK bands that flittered around the limelight like moths only to disappear once the switch was dimmed. There was a time when Elbow were viewed as the kind of band that was difficult to pin down because there seemed to be very little remotely exciting about them. There
They went away and now they’re back – after a fashion. Irish band Horslips are once again in the news with a new biography (Tall Tales, by Mark Cunningham; published by O’Brien Press). Enough has been written, quite likely, about the band itself and their highly influential fusion of rock and traditional Irish music, but possibly not about their 1970s’ album
Little problems, says Paddy McAloon, arise to put a kink in your day. The mid-50s lead everything of Prefab Sprout knows what he’s talking about, and if it wasn’t for the fact that great music is still being made, then you would direct an unsightly and admonishing finger towards the Gods for having the nerve to encumber McAloon with not
Never say never? Who would ever have thought that The Irish Times and Philip Chevron would be discussing the reformation of The Radiators From Space, the first Irish punk band and one that in 1979’s Ghostown released possibly the most ambitious and shamefully overlooked album of Irish rock. Yet here we are, sitting al fresco in Dublin’s Parliament Street,
“What these moments led me to consider, between the bastardisation of the manifestation of a daydream of the brain of an architect, and the simple bliss of hearing the scratch and turn of the long antiquated yet once more desirable record, it occurred to me that mediums change, and are often too long dictated and stunted by their history.” Laura
There are survivors and there are survivors. Travelling along the same time path and flightplan as U2, electro-pop pioneers Depeche Mode have come through the actual ravages of 35 years as a group reasonably intact. A little history might be useful: skipping out of Basildon, Essex, in the late 70s as a quartet of working-class, cherub-faced teenagers – their
Tony Clayton-Lea is an Irish-based freelance journalist/writer/editor who writes on music, arts, and pop culture (and travel/hospitality) for a variety of print and online outlets.
Email: tclaytonlea@gmail.com
This is the personal website for Tony Clayton-Lea.