It's been a wee while since we last wrote about Armagh 5-piece Silences, who have been responsible from great songs over the past few years (including one of our top 10 songs of 2015 with "The Sea"), so it's glad to hear the band back on top form with their latest single, "L.A".
The song marks a slight change of tone for the band. It keeps a lot of the atmospherics that the band have become known for over the past few years, but with its distorted bass and heavy sound, it see the band venture into a pronounced alt-rock sound, something in the mold of Broken Bells, or Foals.
In keeping with the darker nature of the song, the band have released a fantastic, disturbing music video for the song, which depicts a news anchor who seems to know more than he lets on about a story he's been reporting on.
So summer. That's a thing that is currently happening. Hope you are all enjoying sunning yourselves, enjoying time off and taking in a much new music as you can? What's that, not really much of the latter? Well just as well The Metaphorical Boat's here for you then.
There's been some rather fine new music from this neck of the woods in the last wee while, so here's a round-up of a few new tunes that we think will float your Metaphorical Boat - Darren Doherty - Kites (featuring Lauren Bird)
Strabane resident Darren Doherty has been featured on these pages before, as part of his work with the band A Northern Light, who were responsible to two of our favourite local songs of the past few years, "Kill It" and "Paranoia". He's now recording under his own name, and recently released an album, "What You Do", which was recorded over a period of several months, with each track released the moment it was ready.
Our favourite song from the collection is "Kites". Not just because it features Lauren Bird, but because it is a brilliant, powerful stripped-back folk song. A rare delight.
Terry Conlon's got one of those voices that just couldn't come from anywhere else but here. The Cullyhanna native is releasing his debut album "Homegrown" in September, with "Don't Lead Me On" being the lead single. With a voice that is richer beyond his years and a tune that could cause increased lacrymosity, his music will strike a chord with fans of Ciaran Lavery or Foy Vance.
CATALAN! is the new music project from Ewan Friars, who is perhaps best known as a member of North Coast rockers Axis of. "Oka" is the first socially charged single, combining lyrics about indigenous people and social media with thumping beats and towering guitar riffs. If you were a fan of Axis of, and are also partial to a little bit of The Clash, you'll find something to love here.
There's a music video released to accompany the song, which contains quite a lot of symbolism that we are currently unable to interpret, in spite of our A Level Media Studies knowledge.
We'd heard quite a few people talking about Belfast based singer/songwriter Emer Maguire recently, so were glad to be able to catch her live at the Pavilion at the weekend, playing what we believe to be her first full-band performance. It was a quite enjoyable performance, with covers of Muse & Lorde thrown in among her original material, and there was definitely enough going to make sure we keep an eye out for her in the future.
Of her original songs, the one that caught our ear was "Belfast", a great love/hate letter to the city (and funnily enough, the 2nd song we've heard about the city in the past 2 weeks). There's a nice hat-tap towards the Lisburn Road (a street that anyone who's studied at Queen's knows all too well), plus it's nice to hear a synth-bass being used in an acoustic-led song.
And concluding our round-up this month is Armagh band Hunkpapa. We have been reliably informed that the group are one of the most exciting new live bands to come out of Northern Ireland in recent times. We haven't seen them live yet, so we cannot vouch for the accuracy of that claim, but that is something that we hope to remedy at some point in the near future.
For now though, we'll just have to pleasure ourselves with the band's latest single, "Rodeos", which is a great alt-folk-rock single that comes off like a heavier Ben Howard.
It's quite a speedy return for us at TMB toBRØR, the fraternal duo from Armagh whom we last featured on the blog back in April with their driving rock debut single "Something New", which helped them to win Chordblossom's Kickstart competition. Which leads us on to the band's new single "Backburner", a song that has already won some love with the good people at Fresh On The Net and picked up some airplay on BBC 6music. "Backburner" sees a real change of pace for BRØR, being quite a sparse track underpinned by an arpeggiated guitar, and is a narrative driven song about being eaten alive by marital mistrust. It's a real bolt from the blue track from them, but one that is a rather fine one indeed.
The video's pretty great as well, and offers a bit of light relief from the somewhat dark lyrics, featuring a magician, puppetry and drag.
Last night, the winner of Chordblossom's Kickstart competition was announced, and after much deliberation among the judges (full disclosure - your humble captain was part of the panel), it was decided that the winner of the competition was BRØR. They will receive a raft of support to help them in their musical career, including recording time, CD duplication, and a number of supporting slots at gigs and festivals over the next couple. The runners up on the night included Glass Wings, Claire Louise and Sam Wickens, and although they didn't come out on top, we have a feeling we will be covering them on the blog in the future.
So who are BRØR? They are an Armagh based duo made up of brothers Ben & Johno (Hence the name BRØR, which is Swedish for brothers). They were previously members of HOW (a band that we covered on the blog three years ago), and are purveyors of driving rock of the alt and noise variety. "Something New" is their first single, and the song by that won many of us over to their sound. Both their band line-up and sound call to mind Japandroids, with its heavy, bass-absent sound, yearning lyrics and rocky harmonies. They've got a lot of other great songs waiting in the wings, so we are looking forward to what they're going to do now that they've got a bit of traction behind them.
Armagh band Silences made everyone sit up and notice (and for us to continue granting them our attention) last year with the release of the accessible and affecting single "The Sea", which deservedly ended up being one of our favourite singles of 2015. It's fair to say that after that single, the next thing that they bring out was always going to be much anticipated.
Which brings us on to "There's A Wolf", which the band premiered this week. Quite surprisingly, after releasing what was their poppiest song to date, they've not followed up with a similarly accessible song, instead giving us something a little bit more left-field, whilst still being unmistakably sounding like the product of Conchúr White & co. "There's A Wolf" has the band's usual folk underpinnings, but here is is complimented by electronics and heavy guitars that take the song in a completely different direction in the song's final minute, and there's an underlying aggression in the song that we've rarely come to see in their music to date.
"There's A Wolf" is a brave song to for Silences to unleash after releasing a song as accessible as "The Sea", but it's a interesting shift from the band, showing us that there's more to them than the tender sounds we've come to know them for.
"There's A Wolf" is taken from the "Luna" E.P, which will be released on April 15th.
Armagh based group Silences have been on our radar since way back in 2012, back when it was still the solo project of Conchúr White. Since then, we've seen Silences expand into a five-piece band whilst delivering some great music, with their "Nevernames" E.P and single "Sister Snow", all whilst quietly bubbling away, building up a solid ground beneath them as they move up to the next level of their career.
And move up they have done, at least if their new single "The Sea" is anything to go by. Although the band's songs to date have been quite accessible, this new single seems to have been written specifically to win over as many people as humanly possible, and there's no doubt that they've succeeded. The song is a wonderful example of 'emotional indie' in the style of Kodaline (which is a compliment, by the way), with the song building up slowly into a satisfying and powerful denouement.
Although this blog tries not to break into hyperbole and grand predictions (seriously), on this occasion, I am willing to go out on a limb and do just that - "The Sea" is going to be massive. Whether that means relatively massive (ie picks up a ridiculous amount of online love massive), or massive massive (i.e breaks into the charts massive) remains to be seen. But one thing is clear - "The Sea" is the moment that has made it impossible to ignore Silences. They are going places.
Armagh based quintet Silenceswill be releasing their new E.P next month, the follow-up to their well received "Nevernames" from earlier this year. The title track from the E.P, "Sister Snow", has been released to the wide world, accompanied by a music video directed by Alec Moore, which features a young girl interacting with a fantasy world before being pulled back into reality, which offers a great visual accompaniment to the band's folksy style.
This blog first came across Armagh's Conchúr White, who records under the name Silences, after being blown away by his demo of "Ghosts" 16 months ago. Since then, Silences has expanded to a five piece band, and off the back of some high-profile gigs, including a slot at Other Voices Music Trail in Dingle, they have just released their debut E.P in their current form, "Nevernames".
The E.P's lead track "Santa Cruz" has been getting the most attention in the past few weeks, and deservedly so. It's a highly emotional folk-rock tune, somewhere in the vein of Villagers, and is one of those songs that pulls at the heartstrings so tightly that you begin to worry about your aorta detaching itself. The E.P's other two tracks, "Emma" and "Vancouver Aches", tread a similar musical path, but don't come anywhere as close in matching it in terms of grace, emotion or impact.
"Nevernames" is a fairly decent release from the expanded Silences. If they can deliver more songs in the vein of "Santa Cruz", then there's no doubt that they're going to be in it for the long haul.
There's no shortage of folk artists here in Northern Ireland - for some reason, there's a lot of that sort of thing here, and the majority of it is bloody wonderful. Somewhat surprisingly however, it's quite rare to hear songs the skew to the darker side of the genre from this neck of the woods.
That's why it's nice to hear from Armagh singer/songwriter Ciara O'Neill. Although not the biggest name locally at the moment, she has started to establish herself as a live performer - she played at this year's Belfast Nashville Songwriter's Festival, and recently supported respected folk duo Smoke Fairies. Her first solo track released is called "Dead, Black", which as you can probably guess from the title, is not going to be all sunshine and lollipops. It's a haunting, stripped back folk track that sounds like it comes from a different plane of existence. It's got a similar vibe to Marika Hackman, whose pitch-black folk has been winning plaudits from all over, so with a few more songs under her belt, she could start to make a serious impact.
"Dead, Black" is due to feature on her debut E.P, which should be released soon.
