[Read more...]

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

Title: Black Ice

Artist: AC/DC

Essential Track: Rock 'n' Roll Train

Title: The Seldom Seen Kid

Artist: Elbow

Essential Track: Grounds for Divorce

Title: Viva la Vida

Artist: Coldplay

Essential Track: Strawberry Swing

Title: Pacific Ocean Blue

Artist: Dennis Wilson

Essential Track: River Song

Title: Oracular Spectacular

Artist: MGMT

Essential Track: Kids

Title: Everything that Happens will Happen Today

Artist: David Byrne / Brian Eno

Essential Track: One Fine Day

In other business...

Music Highlight of 2008: Glen Hansard's Oscar Win for 'Falling Slowly'

Music Lowlight of 2008 (tie): X Factor releasing 'Hallelujah' / Sigur Ros' latest album

Music TV Highlight of 2008 #1: FUR TV

Music TV Highlight of 2008 #2: Jay - Z at Glastonbury

Music TV Lowlight of 2008 #1: Zhang Yimou's choice and use of music in the opening & closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.

Music Surprise of 2008 #1: 'Chinese Democracy' wasn't the dog everyone predicted it would be

Music Surprise of 2008 #2: Fleet Foxes are not as good as everybody claims

The Sound Waves 'Rumour of the Year': That surfers either want to buy or have the cash to buy holiday homes, as if !

The Sound Waves 'Culture Trend of the Year': i-Pod Envy 3.0, if you don't have an i-Phone, you are nobody, apparently.

The Sound Waves 'Mystery of 2008'; How did McDonalds know we were going back to 1981 in their adverts?

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

Like selling the proverbial sand to the proverbial Arabs, Carly Sings (below right) has released her album of Paris-flavoured pop in France. 'The Glove Thief' is available on import in FNAC, the country's biggest chain of record stores. (They also sell books, computers and other home entertainment stuff.)

The first big review for 'The Glove Thief' came in this week's issue of top-selling music and culture magazine Les Inrockuptibles. Though their reviews don't carry ratings à la CLUAS, Les Inrocks are clearly intrigued by Carly and impressed by her album.

Intrigued, because the reviewer calls her "une fluette" (a slight, fragile person), a pretty Irishwoman with a sexy accent and a crystalline voice. (We won't dispute that.) Impressed, because the final verdict is that 'The Glove Thief' is "un écrin précieux propre à embaumer l'âme pour au moins quelques semaines" - "a precious jewellery box to soothe the soul for at least a few weeks" (our translation).

Why not read the review in French and correct us on our translations? Or, perhaps lessfun but more soothing to the soul, listen to some tunes from Carly Sings' MySpace page and watch the video for 'Apple Tree':

[Read more...]

[Read more...]

For all our talk of Nantes indie-rock and Grenoble disco-pop and Riviera synth-shoegazing, when you in Eire think of French music it's most likely Parisian electronica that comes to mind. So here's a French gig in Dublin that'll suit you.

Acclaimed mixing quartet Birdy Nam Nam (right) are doing a DJ set at ALT in Dublin this Friday (12 December). Kick-off is at midnight - so should this be in the listings for Saturday 13 December instead? And what's the difference between DJs doing a DJ set and DJs doing an ordinary set? We're fairly confused. 

Birdy Nam Nam's thing is that there's four of 'em milling away at the turntables and twiddly knobs at the same time. So, they're like a DJ band, if you want to be simplistic about it. Their creativity and innovation has already made them world champions - they won the DMC Technics team prize in 2002. More recently, they've made it onto the soundtrack of 'Transporter 3', though admittedly that doesn't have the same cachet as winning the world championships.

Anyway, you can visit Birdy Nam Nam's MySpace page to check them out before you head along to ALT. And you can watch them in action here, in the video for 'Abbesses':

[Read more...]

Parisians may not be eating our pork, but tonight they'll have two tasty helpings of our pop.

The Script (right), the latest new U2/Van/Cranberries, are capitalising on the incessant French airplay for 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved'. They're playing at the Pont Ephèmere, a small venue in the north of the city.

The show sold out ages ago; the CLUAS Foreign Correspondent (Paris) has been contacted by people looking for tickets, based on the logic that only a dozen people live in Ireland and we all know each other well enough to have loads of tickets for each others' concerts. Which is true, of course.

The French media is more sophisticated that to reduce The Script to 'the new U2'. No, Paris has pondered and its position is that the band play 'Celtic soul' à la Van the Person. Again, incontestable logic from the land of Descartes.

From the new U2 to the anti-Bono: the mighty Gavin Friday is also in Paris. He's at the Centre Culturel Irlandais (a.k.a. 'the Irish College') as narrator in Ian Wilson's work "The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World".

So, none of his own tunes tonight from the erstwhile Fionan Hanvey. But it's a good opportunity to remind ourselves of the cracking singles he has made with his long-time associate Maurice Seezer: from early '90s RTE music show 'Electric Ballroom' here are stripped-down versions of 'I Want To Live' and 'King Of Trash':

[Read more...]

Beijing indie specialists Pilot Records will bring Sub 41 and progressive metallers Symphony X to China in 2009. The label's own charges AK47 and Reflector put in some great shows in the second half of this year, says label founder Zeng Yu. So too his hard-rocking signees Honeygun. Sub 41 will travel to Beijing in April. “We won’t make money but it will be a wonderful chance to draw more and more Chinese to rock music,” says Zeng, his usual likeable and proselytizing self. Pilot is bringing in the big guns because they want to have maximum impact on first-time concert goers. 

[Read more...]