HUNKYPAPA
WILL RUSSELL Masterful offering from folk supremo On a wild night, in the dying days of a year, a crowd of us clambered upon tables, stools and one another to get a glimpse of John Spillane singing to a packed Páidí Ó Sé’s bar in Ventry. It was worth it. Spillane is an extraordinary figure. Continue Reading
WILL RUSSELL “Sticky Fingers is three quarters of an hour of apeiron mood wrapped in Warhol’s package.” I never met JP Donleavy, neither did Hunter S Thompson. Bizarrely, I had a better chance. Donleavy lived on the shores of Owel, a lake that metamorphosed children into swans and stuffed High Kings of Ireland into barrels and Continue Reading
WILL RUSSELL For Those About To Post-Rock Aquarter-of-a-century not out, Mogwai’s 10th record is definitively Mogwai. Nobody else sounds quite like them. With their last two records, Every Country’s Sun and Rave Tapes, breaking into the UK Top 10, As The Love Continues may be viewed in time as the final piece of a mid-period Mogwai Continue Reading
THE HOT PRESS NEWSDESK It was a very special occasion indeed when former Oasis front-man Liam Gallagher came to 3Arena, in Dublin towards the end of November. And afterwards, there was a hootenanny in the centre of town that lifted the gathered throng into another dimension. By Will Russell. Gallagher @3Arena 23/11/19www.peterohanlonphotography.com/Hotpress.com Iwoke feeling disinterred, Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL Revolutionary Road… Revolutionary Love possesses echoes of Marc Riboud’s iconic 1967 photograph of Jan Rose Kasmir clasping a chrysanthemum, gazing placidly at bayonet-wielding soldiers. That photo was taken during a march on the Pentagon to protest against US involvement in Vietnam. In a similar spirit, Di Franco is battling against communication breakdown, loss Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL PUBLISHED IN HOTPRESS ON 27 NOVEMBER 2020 Happy Thanksgiving, From Longford with Love… There is a road that leads from Drumlish to Ballinamuck in the County Longford that they call the Bronx. For centuries, many born here, joined the thousands sailing west and settled in that New York borough across the Harlem River. Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL PUBLISHED IN HOTPRESS 30 OCTOBER 2020 Eels main man E discusses the band’s defiantly hopeful new opus Earth To Dora, the legacy of his famous physicist father, and onstage hi-jinks at Dublin’s Olympia. https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.427.1_en.html#goog_1977192132volume is gedempt Eels’ ringmaster, Mark ‘E’ Everett, answers the phone to Hot Press from an LA that – if reports to be believed Continue Reading
October 24, 2020 Meet the writers – UK edition In the lead-up to the publication of Influenced: Stories from the Lockdown, we’re sitting down to chat with all the contributors to the anthology, and give readers a bit of an introduction to everyone. In this next installment of interviews, we had a Zoom chat with John Paul Continue Reading
Published in Hotpress 16 October 2020 BY: WILL RUSSELL Sundowner is out now. Kevin Morby penned an ode to New York on his first album, Harlem River. He is a Kerouac wandering figure on Still Life and a Los Angeleno erratic seeking the moon by way of John Fante on Singing Saw and City Music. On his new album, Sundowner, Morby ambitiously attempts to Continue Reading
The Origin of the Species Published in The Riff The gags are endless — After the Apocalypse, it will be only the rats and Keith Richards. We can’t take drugs anymore because Keith Richards has taken them all. God boomed, “Adam this is Eve. You are to love her forever. Adam replied, “Okay, but who Continue Reading