Five of the Best: #8: Alexis Somerville

World Cup preview piece written for The Impartial Reporter At some point in the wee hours of November 19 th last year, my anger diffused. The nation, nay, the world had been outraged by the ‘Hand of Gaul’ incident that sent Ireland crashing from the World Cup Play Off. Calls for Henry’s head on a plate reverberated around the land. But…read more

Written for the Say Kimchi News I’ve always been a bit of a coward, yet paradoxically, always been pretty keen on scaring the crap out of myself. I think I forget the first part until right before I’m about to do the second. Last week I had a couple of days off work, so I decided I’d go to Daegu…read more

I sometimes wonder why I bother with a Twitter account. I don’t tweet much; rarely learn anything interesting from it, and use up hours of my time that could undoubtedly be spent doing something much more productive. And then I find something like this. I’m sitting at my computer, wondering what The Guardian has to say for itself and reading inane tweets from the Brighton Argus, and a steady stream of tweet updates start coming…read more

I’ve written about Deer Tick here before. They’re a band I’ve loved for a while and when I caught their show in Manchester a couple of months back, they blew me away. In fact, I said as much . The piece was published by Fresh Underground Culture Magazine and the band saw it and they liked it. Or in their own…read more

Written for The Three Wise Monkeys After four years of hyperbole and anticipation, the World Cup is almost over. Few months on the calendar command so much effort from the media and our livers. And if you support Korea or an English speaking nation, few reap so little reward. Maybe it’s because I’m Irish (neither North nor South qualified), or…read more

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Manchester lately and over the course my visits, I’ve been to a few great gigs including Rodrigo Y Gabriela, The Pogues and Deer Tick. But on Friday night we decided we would take in a couple of local bands. My girlfriend’s friend James Kelly was playing at an unsigned night at Dry…read more

Saturday night was quite simply fantastic. To cap it all off I bumped into Caspa and Rod Azlan (above) while watching Futurebound, I must say they are two proper sound fellas. In a special preview, I will share my review of Saturday night as I have written it for the magazine. I’m sorry for the impersonal nature of the piece…read more

Because sometimes, just sometimes, it’s alright to rock out with your cock out… Written for FUCM Remember the good ol’ days? You remember, back when Pluto was still a planet? People used to laugh, regularly. They would shout, maybe have a little drinkie and, y’know, enjoy themselves? Oh, nostalgia! And, sometimes, people would go to concerts and shows and they…read more

Nick Mitchell is the Editor of the excellent blog Under the Radar , which presents the cream of new Scottish music, daily. He works for The Scotsman and writes about all things musical for The Skinny, Clash and The Line of Best Fit. Hats off to Nick for selecting perhaps one of the most underrated albums of the past ten years, Midlake’s excellent Trials of Van Occupanther in part 4 of Five of the Best. Radiohead – Amnesiac …read more