John Meagher

If 2002's A Rush of Blood to the Head represents the band's high water mark and 2021's Music of the Spheres their nadir, this album is far closer to the latter

John Meagher Listeners will be hard pressed not to sing along to the former Housemartin's latest album, while the Offspring's 11 th outing showcases their pop sensibilities

Catherine Sanz delivers a warts-and-all look at the rise of the event and its ‘shameless and thin-skinned' co-founder

It is a sign of the legacy of his art-rock band, the Virgin Prunes, and his work on film soundtracks, not to mention several fine solo albums, that a new Gavin Friday album feels like an event. Added spice comes from the fact that it has been 13 years since he last released a studio album, the well-received Catholic . Ecce Homo — Latin for ‘behold the man’ and words apparently uttered by biblical baddie Pontius Pilate — has been a long time in gestation.

When a relationship between a politician and their party goes sour, it is often ugly and it is always public. But few in recent years have been accompanied by quite the level of drama as that of veteran Councillor Noel Thomas and Fianna Fáil.

Serge Pizzorno has lost count of the number of times Kasabian have played Ireland, but there’s one show here he will never forget. It was 2009 and they were on the support bill at Slane. Oasis headlined what would be one of their final gigs before an acrimonious split that has only been healed in the past couple of months. Nobody was to know that then, of course, and Kasabian were a comparatively new band who were keen to play as though their lives depended on it.