Podcasts about niall byrne

A live recording from The Big Romance about a 2008 Sub Pop-released classic album of the 2000s. Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink Step into a world of misty melodies and cavernous echoes with Seattle band Fleet Foxes' landmark debut – a defining record of the late-2000s indie folk revival. Led by Robin Pecknold, the album blends the lush, pastoral harmonies of the 1960s with a haunting baroque-pop sensibility and lyrical themes rooted in nature, tradition, and introspection. Like the Bruegel painting on its cover, every track reveals a dense, beautiful world that evokes a timeless – almost mythic Americana sound. This podcast episode is a live recording from our listening party in The Big Romance in April, with guest journalist and Fleet Foxes fan Aoife Barry. Our next Listening Party is Smashing Pumpkins later this month and it's sold out. Listen Closely: Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (2008) A Nialler9 listening party, hosted by Niall Byrne with guest Aoife Barry. Before the album Niall: Hello everyone, how are you? Welcome to the Listen Closely album listening party. I'm Niall, and this is Aoife Barry. Aoife: Hello. Niall: We're here tonight because Aoife picked this album, as she has before. You picked Jeff Buckley last year. Aoife: Yeah, and we ended up doing three of them. Niall: We did, we went to Cork. We did two here and then we went to Cork to talk about Jeff Buckley. And you were at the My Bloody Valentine listening party last year as well, back in October. Aoife: It must have been October, yeah. Niall: Well, obviously we're here for a very different album tonight: Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes, from 2008. As you heard there, we played a bit of the Sun Giant EP by the band, which came out a few months before this album, because we want to give the album its full due. They're a little different, and we'll talk about that. But yeah, you picked the record. Aoife: I did. I obviously must like it. And it's such an incredible record. Is there anybody here who hasn't heard it? That's really exciting, if so. I'm excited for you to hear it. You got a sneak peek there of what the vibe is going to be. I picked it because I love this record, but I also had a funny story about how I first heard them. Back in 2008, when this record came out, I'd read about this band called Fleet Foxes in a music magazine. I don't even think I'd heard a song yet, this is back in the day. And I was on holidays in Berlin, and in the tiny little hostel we were staying in, they had a sign up on the wall: "Who's playing tonight? Fleet Foxes, Café Zapata." I said to my boyfriend, "I think that's a band I read about in the magazine, will we go see them?" And he was like, "Grand." So we went, and they were unbelievable. It was so good. Beach House were supporting them. So it was 2008 smacking you in the face. Niall: Come on. Aoife: And I took photos, which I found. I have photos. Artifacts. One is terrible, the other one's not so terrible, taken on one of those little Canon digital cameras. And I still have the ticket, I kept the ticket, I'm one of those hoarders who keeps all their gig tickets. But it was so good: the venue they played in had a dragon that breathed fire out every fifteen minutes. Niall: So they'd be playing and this dragon… Aoife: I'm not even exaggerating. Fire would just shoot out of this mechanical dragon. It was so Berlin. And Fleet Foxes were so stunning, and Beach House were so stunning. I love Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, I love all those harmony vibes, I wish I was born in the seventies, sadly I was not. So I fell in love with them immediately, and I've been a big fan ever since. Although I'll say I probably dipped a little bit around the Crack-Up era, their third album, but then I saw them when Shore came out, their most recent album, and fell right back in love with them. Niall: We're going to talk about all the albums that come afterwards, but we'll start with this one, because this is presumably your favourite, or one of them. Aoife: Shore is up there as well for me, but yeah. Niall: So what was it about Fleet Foxes at the time? For context: in 2008 there was quite a lot of this kind of music around. We previously did Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago as a listening party, and the funny thing, which I only found out when we did this, is that they have the same origin story in a way. Both songwriters went to a cabin in the woods to pour their heart out and write the songs. Aoife: I think Justin Vernon just got there first in terms of the marketing. Niall: So they must have pulled back on talking about it too much, because it's basically the same thing. They never really talked about Robin Pecknold's writing process in those terms. Aoife: For Emma was such a massive moment, everybody was obsessed with this guy who broke up with a girl and went to a cabin and wrote a record about it. It was the ur indie-folk album. Niall: What was really appealing about Fleet Foxes is that they were so young, between about twenty-two and twenty-seven, and Robin Pecknold was twenty-one when he wrote the record. Which is frankly offensive, you shouldn't be allowed to be so talented at twenty-one. Aoife: I know. And they were clearly these people from Seattle, which we associate with grunge, and then it becomes this place where they're bringing out all the pastoral, outdoorsy, mountain-and-sea vibes of the Washington area. They're obviously really influenced by the seventies too, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, by Laurel Canyon, but also by Appalachian folk. There's a real purity to what they're doing. The harmonies are unbelievable, there's even a bit of a gospel feeling. So these young guys made this album that was being called an iconic American record on release. The Guardian called it a landmark American album, something like that. And that's special, because you don't get that many records immediately being called landmark. Niall: It was a very exciting time for music around then. I actually brought some records. We mentioned Beach House and Teen Dream earlier, that's a bit later, 2010. I wanted to do a listening party for that at some point, that'd be good craic. Around that time you had Animal Collective and Panda Bear, Person Pitch was right there, that was the apex for that very experimental scene. A few years later we had Sufjan, our very first listening party. And Bon Iver, of course. There's also stuff like Neutral Milk Hotel very much of that vibe. Aoife: I've noticed people covering Neutral Milk Hotel more now. Niall: I think when we got to it, it was on its second go-round, and now it's getting a third, which is great. It's a great record. So, the band were from Seattle, they had a bit of the scruffy flannel-shirt look, but obviously didn't sound like that. The album was written in the woods, in the cabin, brought to the band, and recorded with Phil Ek. Aoife: Who did a lot of stuff with Built to Spill. Niall: Yeah, and he worked with The Shins, and Modest Mouse, a really long history. Aoife: Are The Shins from Seattle as well? Niall: I think they might be. Band of Horses is another one. So they recorded it themselves with Phil Ek, paid for it all themselves, and then the local major independent label Sub Pop came calling. Obviously known for a lot of grunge traditionally, but they'd clearly been releasing this kind of music around then too, The Shins had been on the label for a few years, Band of Horses. When it came to it, they signed to Sub Pop. Apparently there was a bidding war. Aoife: They'd become quite popular on MySpace. Anybody remember MySpace? Every time I do one of these I feel older and older, mentioning the top eight, the randomers you'd put in your top eight. Word could spread quite quickly once you got popular on MySpace. Niall: What I thought was really interesting, that I discovered when I was researching, is that recording the album was actually a total pain for them. They didn't have much money, so they ended up recording a lot of it in their houses, or in Robin Pecknold's family home. And he re-did all the vocals right before they mastered the record, because he'd been sick during the initial sessions and his voice wasn't in great shape. They recorded it all in one go, scrapped that, did another version, and kept moving the running order around. I'm always fascinated by albums where the creation was a total pain and they had no idea it would even work out. Robin Pecknold actually said, "I hope nobody cares about this album, because I just want to move on to the next one." And then it becomes this iconic record. Aoife: Isn't every artist sick of their album by the time it's done? You're like, "my paintings." Yeah. Niall: 2008 was an interesting time for it to land. The album draws on the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Nick Drake, Simon & Garfunkel, Fairport Convention, Judee Sill, very much old-timey or sixties folk and pastoral stuff. And in 2008 there's a financial crash. The album was worked on before that, but it was released into that environment, and a lot of this music seemed to catch. When things go bad, we retreat, we dream, we listen to music that's maybe the opposite of what we're feeling. There was a gentleness, an unhurriedness to it that resonated. Aoife: Grizzly Bear is another band from that time. When Jay-Z and Beyoncé went to see Grizzly Bear in Brooklyn, that was kind of where all the indie music peaked. Niall: And the other part of it, which I was involved in, was the MP3 blogs, that's where you'd hear this music. Especially the American and Canadian stuff, no one was promoting it over here yet, so you'd be months ahead. You'd hear Fleet Foxes in these MP3 formats. That was a mad period, it showed how the internet could collapse geography, a song could spread really quickly on the blogs. And in an American context, this came out post-Bush, with the Obama era coming in, a more hopeful tone. You had the Lehman Brothers crash, these global pressures, and then these hopeful times too. It's interesting to wonder whether these albums are a reaction to it, or whether they appeal to us because we want nice, happy things. I feel like Fleet Foxes have so much emotional depth: there's yearning, sadness, hope, nostalgia. Aoife: I loved Yellow House by Grizzly Bear, their first record, a complex, complicated, almost jazzy thing that sounded beautiful but had a lot going on. We weren't going for simplistic music, but we wanted music that gave us depth and beauty. Is art a solution to the world collapsing? Niall: We could be answering that in 2026. We live in a cursed timeline, as I keep saying. That's all I'm going to say. But what else happened in 2008 in the wider circle of music? Portishead returned with Third. TV on the Radio released Dear Science. MGMT released Oracular Spectacular, 'Kids' and all that. Cut Copy released In Ghost Colours, Indie Sleaze night on Saturday, folks, come on. Kanye put out 808s & Heartbreak, that was November that year. Rihanna was at the peak of her powers. Aoife: Katy Perry appeared that year. And 'American Boy'. Niall: 'American Boy', still one of the best pop songs, fire. Iron & Wine was the other one I forgot to mention. So it was a really vibrant, varied year. As you heard, there's the Sun Giant EP too. Aoife: The thing about that is it came out before the album, but was recorded after. The album was done, in the bag. Niall: They decided to go into the studio and record Sun Giant, a collection of songs intended to sell on tour. It ended up being quite popular, and for a lot of people it was their first time discovering Fleet Foxes. Aoife: It wasn't like The Coronas' 'San Diego Song', their summer-holiday anthem, or anything like that. But it came out before the album, and then the album arrives. Niall: So what was the reaction at the time? Was it immediate? Aoife: Things happened really quickly. In January that year they got all the MySpace attention, and by June the album was coming out. Really, really quick. There was so much chatter about them, which is partly why I'd seen the name, and a music blog like yours would have seen it too, and known they were one of the big bands. In a way that's harder now. Niall: These days you see bands like Geese getting a lot of attention because they use companies that help them go viral. You didn't really have that then. Now you'd dress yourself up in some gimmick, polka dots, whatever, and go viral all over the internet for it. I couldn't imagine these lads doing that. Aoife: No. But maybe in a way they were cosplaying living in the forest, on the Puget Sound. Niall: Anyway, when the album came out, people loved them, and it really hit it off. Because they sound so seventies, your parents would love the records and you'd love the records. There's almost a lullaby quality to the folk stuff too. The music is applicable to anybody of any generation, and there's something lovely about nostalgic music that reminds you of a better time. To finish on that point: I think there's something very mysterious about Fleet Foxes, they feel out of time. They're these young, scruffy lads with the beards, but there's a mystery to them. They didn't come across as the hipster end of things, they weren't leaning into anything. They were presented as the kind of band that wouldn't have had phones, would have lived off-grid, which is funny because they were a MySpace band. They're the most un-MySpace band you can imagine. Surprise people, do something a bit different, don't be exactly what people want you to be, and they'll love you for it. And then your songs are unbelievable too, soaring and stunning. Can we talk for a second about the cover? It's an original painting from 1559 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Netherlandish Proverbs. It depicts a densely populated Flemish village scene illustrating 126 folk proverbs. There's a lot there. Some on this side are cut off, but for example, this woman here, she's putting the blue cloak on her husband, meaning she deceives him. This guy is casting roses before swine, wasting effort on the unworthy. And right at the top there's a man running through a field with his arse on fire, chasing pigs, "he who eats fire craps sparks," do not be surprised at the outcome if you attempt a dangerous venture. There are 126 of those. Aoife: The interesting thing is that the band managed to get permission to use it. Really unusual to be allowed use it as commercial artwork. Niall: And apparently the museum that holds the artwork were delighted. A lot of stars aligned for them. It's an iconic cover because it's so different from what anybody else was doing, clearly of a particular period, and it has that Where's Wally quality. I have a quote about it. Robin said: "We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do, and my brother had been working some stuff out, when I saw this Bruegel painting in a book my girlfriend had. I liked that it had a really intriguing meaning, there's a story to each little scene, which felt fitting for the record. It was dense but unified, not a collage. It has a Where's Waldo quality, something you could look at for a long time on a vinyl sleeve and keep finding new little things. It was very easy to get the museum in Berlin that has it to say yes, they were super excited the band wanted to use it, and put it in their newsletter. When you open it up, on the inside there's a Paisley pattern traced from the back of a book that Skyler's mum got me. We wanted two very different feelings." So, what to look out for when we press play very shortly? Aoife: When I was going back to this, I had it in my head that every song was one of these big songs, because there are so many big moments. But actually there are two tracks that are pretty much acoustic, so it's interesting to notice how they go from the big sound to the small. And for me they're a real emotion-and-feeling band, so notice how you feel listening to it. I always feel this swell of emotion with Fleet Foxes, I was walking down the road listening to Shore and I was like, my God. So lean back and feel into the emotions they're bringing you. And listen to the lyrics if you can make them out, because they're so out of time, all about pack horses and this amazing imagery. Robin Pecknold said he didn't write about a lot of personal stuff because he didn't have enough life experience yet, so instead he wrote these beautifully poetic narratives about pastoral and rural life. So I'd say the lyrics and the feelings are the two things. Niall: Track two, 'White Winter Hymnal', is probably the biggest one, watch out for that. And a few other people thanked and cited as influences, for some extra context: Brian Wilson, Joanna Newsom, Bob Dylan, Noah Lennox and all the lads from Animal Collective, Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson of The Band, Blitzen Trapper, who they toured with at the time and who were bigger than them then. For some reason Joni Mitchell and Neil Young are listed together, which is fair enough. Marvin Gaye, Damien Jurado, Paul Simon and John Lennon listed together. Townes Van Zandt, a legend. Vashti Bunyan, and Van Morrison. There's a nice quote from Robin Pecknold I'll read afterwards. Let's just open it up and listen. I'll play it at full volume, it's about thirty-nine minutes, two sides. Close your eyes, whatever you want to do, vibe away in your own way. [The album plays: Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes, 39 minutes.] After the album Niall: It's quite an economical album, isn't it? It doesn't stick around long, thirty-nine minutes. Aoife: I like an economical album. It's also one of the first fairly short records we've done here. Niall: That's part of why I was thinking about Sun Giant in that context too. I'm going to read a bit from the liner notes, because for an album that's very much about feelings, with only a few direct songs, some of what's written here is interesting: "My first memory has always been of me and my mom on a cold grey day down at some beach in Washington, along the Puget Sound somewhere near Seattle. I would be around two or three years old, and we were with a friend of mine from the neighbourhood and his mom, walking among the driftwood looking for crabs. Even now I can remember the smell and temperature of the air, the feeling of the sand and the swaying tall grass. I can even remember looking over at my friend and how his face looked when he smiled back at me. Another memory I'll sometimes recall as my first is dressing up in the dead of summer as Jack London, with tennis rackets on my feet and wearing my dad's hiking pack, after seeing Disney's terrible version of White Fang. Or the memory of stealing my neighbour's Big Wheel and riding it halfway down the block before getting caught and having to turn around defeated. Or wearing a fireman's outfit while washing my parents' car, or eating an orange popsicle from the ice cream truck. These have always been some of my most distinct and persistent memories of childhood. So it came as a disappointment when, one day as a teenager, I opened up a photo album and found pictures of each and every one of these memories. I didn't have a single memory that didn't belong to, or somehow grow from, those pictures my parents had. I guess I've seen all these photographs at some point, forgotten they were just photographs, and over time made them into my most tangible memories. That's scary to me in a way. This leads me to something weird about the power music has: its transportability. Any time I hear a song or record that meant a lot to me at a certain moment, I'm instantly taken back to that place in full detail. Whenever I hear 'Feel Flows' by the Beach Boys, I'm taken straight to the back of my parents' car on the way to my grandparents' place, with Surf's Up in my Walkman and the Cascade Mountains going by in the window. Any song off Radiohead's Kid A brings back the airport near Seattle, from when we were on the way to Colorado for a wedding and Kid A was the only record I brought or wanted to bring. 'Crayon Angels' by Judee Sill is the whole winter of last year. And Brian Wilson's solo version of 'Surf's Up' takes me back to driving my parents' car around town alone at sixteen, windows down at night. I can't ascribe exact memories to songs by The Microphones, Joni Mitchell, Built to Spill, Dungen, Harry Nilsson and so many others, and it's a form of recall I can actually trust, there's no visual element to complicate things, no chance of a planted memory that wasn't actually supposed to be there. Maybe I should be concerned that I'm alone in almost all of these memories, but I guess I was just a private kid, and music was a private experience for me. Music activates a certain mental freedom in a way nothing else can, and that is so empowering. You can call it escapism if you like, but I see it as connecting to a deeper human feeling than the one found in the day-to-day world." Aoife: That's lovely. It's a nice addendum. And he was only twenty-one. Niall: For some reason it's signed "Warren Gamaliel Bancroft Winnipeg Harding," Warren G. Harding being the 29th president of the United States. I don't know why, he thought it was funny. Dated April 6th, 2008, Chicago, Illinois. So, any particular highlights, anything that stood out? Aoife: I was reminded how much I love 'Blue Ridge Mountains', the second-to-last song. I just love those four- and five-part harmonies so much. There's something that really gets me about beautiful harmonies stacked on each other that sound so natural. My dad was really into Neil Young and all of that era, my mum's really into Simon & Garfunkel, so I feel like I came out of the womb going, this is the music I love. Niall: There was another one I meant to mention. Aoife: I'm really bad at remembering song names, which isn't great for an arts journalist. They go in one ear and out the other. Niall: 'He Doesn't Know Why'. Aoife: That was it. I always forget the name of that one, and it's an absolute banger. It's quite a direct song, the last one on the first side. Niall: He mentions his brother Sean in 'Blue Ridge Mountains', which is interesting. And Oliver James is his younger brother, that's the last song. Aoife: His sister is Aja, after the Steely Dan album. The parents were really into them. Niall: It holds up so well. The harmonies and vocals sound incredible, there are those beautiful little flourishes, a flute on one of the tracks, the guitar is stunning, lovely little bass lines. I love the way Robin Pecknold and the band hear music. There's a really good Song Exploder episode with him talking about a song from Crack-Up, and the way he thinks about translating his thoughts and emotions into music is so illuminating. He has a beautiful melodic flow that's really similar to the flow of water and nature. There are so many nature references, it's almost parody there are so many. Aoife: You could do a Portlandia sketch about it. "Power of nature, man." "Come down from the mountain, you've been gone too long." Niall: In terms of the line-up: alongside Robin Pecknold on vocals there was Skyler Skjelset on lead guitar, his best friend from Nathan Hale High School, later joined by Casey Wescott, Christian Wargo on bass, and Nicholas Peterson on drums, who left after this album. Aoife: And who came in as the drummer? Niall: A man who's been a main character in one of these listening parties himself: Josh Tillman, Father John Misty, played drums with them. Aoife: For how long? Niall: Only a year or two, pretty short. As I said, main character, he was making his own record. Any Father John Misty fans? He writes really good songs and he's handsome, so we all love him, but he's also a bit of a pain, and he didn't get on very well with Robin Pecknold, which isn't surprising. When I was looking back at the Pitchfork interview they did in 2008, a few months after the album came out, it was a big joint interview with Robin and Josh Tillman, and Tillman is answering the questions at the start. That's confidence. Do you want to hear a quote from what Robin Pecknold said? I've written it in my little notebook, so old-school, that's the only way I remember these things. In a 2020 Reddit AMA, Pecknold said that on that tour, the Helplessness Blues tour, Tillman was supposed to bring out his own record, but his label said he could only release it after the tour. So he was on tour thinking, "I want to bring out my own record, I'm tired of Fleet Foxes." Pecknold said he "had to endure being around a lot of substance abuse, sabotaged shows, general ill treatment and shit-talking, all while paying him for songs he didn't have anything to do with. It sucked." And then Tillman left the band. Whereas in that Pitchfork interview he'd said, "I love playing in this band, these are all my friends, I'm having the best time, I'm sorry if that's a corny quote, but that's the best thing about this experience right now." Aoife: So he was lying through his teeth. I think he's the kind of person who really has to be a solo artist, too iconic a personality. You wouldn't want to wrangle him out of bed to get to the next show. Niall: Too big a price. You mentioned Pitchfork, the album was number one on their end-of-year list in 2008, and they listed Sun Giant alongside it, breaking the traditional conventions of end-of-year lists. What they said was: listing Fleet Foxes' debut album and EP together may be awkward, but it just feels right, they're two sides of a coin that equally express the band's mastery, "a catch-all Americana that takes a wide slice of our popular music spectrum and pulls it through a reverse prism to create a gorgeous and focused sound of the band's own. The threads of Brian Wilson's coastal pop, Appalachian folk, modern indie rock, Grateful Dead jams and other influences are masterfully synthesised in the band's harmonies." Robin Pecknold's sense of dynamics, they said, flows like a river, wild and free but logical, filling what needs to be filled and moving on. I swear I didn't rip that off Pitchfork, I came up with something similar on my own. Aoife: Very good. Niall: It was Uncut's album of the year too. But more than anything, and this is a strange accolade, the album was ranked number 36 on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest stoner albums. Aoife: I don't think Robin Pecknold was a stoner. It doesn't really fit. He's a reader. Niall: So what came after? Helplessness Blues, which is really difficult to say, in 2011, then Crack-Up in 2017, then Shore in 2020. Big long gaps, some personnel changes. And Robin Pecknold, as we've established, is a very literary guy, he went to Columbia to do an undergrad in English literature, because he'd left high school early and gone to a community college, and he really wanted that college experience. So that was part of the break. He's also had difficult times, he's spoken about mental health issues and suicidal ideation, many tough experiences that contributed to the gaps too. They haven't released anything since 2020, and he does a lot of cover events. There are two live records. He's actually playing a gig tonight, I think, where he covers Judee Sill. Any Judee Sill fans? Aoife: Oh my gosh, she's amazing. Nobody ever knows Judee Sill. If you listen to anything, listen to Heart Food, it's iconic. He loves her, mentions her on this record. She's the one who does 'The Kiss', people might have seen her perform it on the Old Grey Whistle Test, it's on YouTube. She had a really tragic life. Niall: One of those I've been meaning to listen to properly for years. She only has two records, so it's easy to get into. There's a documentary about her as well, which I haven't seen. Aoife: She's one of those ill-fated seventies musicians, really religious imagery, did a lot of drugs, really interesting. Niall: Did you get to see them again after your first foray in Berlin? Aoife: I saw them when they toured, though it's really bad when you can't remember what you were doing in the 2010s. Niall: Did anybody see them at that Dublin gig, the outdoor one in 2022? Wasn't it amazing. They've played here a fair bit: Vicar Street in 2008, Electric Picnic 2009, The Marquee in Cork 2011, the Iveagh Gardens in 2017. I don't know if I've missed any, maybe you can tell me. So if you were to pick, is there any further listening or reading you'd suggest to somebody, not necessarily Fleet Foxes? Aoife: Some of it is obvious. As I said, I'd definitely check out Judee Sill, because if you really like Fleet Foxes you'd really vibe with her. And he mentions Harry Nilsson, also unbelievable, more well known than Judee Sill, did the cover of 'Everybody's Talkin''. I'd also mention a guy people would have known at one point but isn't very well known now: Richard Swift. He sadly passed away a couple of years ago. He was friends with Robin Pecknold, a hugely talented musician who struggled with addiction. He has an amazing double album from around 2005 or 2006 that's brilliant, and a record called The Hex, which is referenced on 'Sunblind' on Shore, that's the song where Robin name-checks a lot of musicians he loves, like Elliott Smith, David Berman and Richard Swift. It's such a beautiful record for finding new people to listen to, and it's lovely to hear a musician pay tribute to musicians he loves. The imagery is him talking about this beautiful day where he'll go for a swim and listen to all these beautiful bands, an ecstatic kind of song. So check out all of those records, but Richard Swift deserves more fans, and The Hex is really, really good. Niall: Good shout. What we'll do now is play a tune, and then maybe give Sun Giant another go if you want to stick around. Our next listening party is on the 27th of May, and it's an indie-rock album very close to my heart: Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It in People. I've been wanting to do this one on record for a long time. They're playing here later in the year, but I want to give this record its flowers, it's incredible. My niece has just turned seventeen and I bought her a copy, because it's an anthemic record for a seventeen-year-old. I can't believe that band are still going, which is kind of mad, but it's hard to underline what Broken Social Scene meant to a certain segment of indie. Aoife: And there's four hundred of them on stage. They're from Canada, and we were all like, my God, these people are the best. Niall: For me it's the MP3 times again, we'll talk about this next month. I heard about them through the music blogs, and then I got to see them in the Button Factory, which was the Temple Bar Music Centre at the time. It was one of the first things I ever wrote about, back in 2005. A transcendental experience. Aoife: They're so good live. Niall: I once DJ'd in Galway after one of their gigs, and one of the members of the band, I'll leave him nameless, came over and turned off the decks while I was DJing. Aoife: On purpose? Niall: He was that drunk. I can't remember what I was playing, but I was like, great, DJing after Broken Social Scene and then a band member ruins it. I don't think he liked it. No, I think he was just really drunk and thought it was funny. Thumbs down to him. In a way it's surprising a man like that has managed to persist in a band with so many members. Anyway, I digress. We'll talk about it next month, May 27th. Aoife: I cannot wait. I've been listening to it a lot lately again, it's fantastic. Niall: Thank you for being here. Let's play a bit of this and see what happens. Thanks for being here, appreciate it.

TRM (formerly known as The Redneck Manifesto) release their sixth album Grushy via Dublin's Ten Spot Records on Friday, September 5. Comprising seven tracks, they say they found a new creative surge - a different pulse yet from the same wellspring - when making the album. Currently a three piece (though swelling to six when playing live), Niall Byrne, Matty Bolger and Richie Egan have been playing together for nearly 30 years. On the TPOE podcast, Matty and Richie talk about how TRM startted, what the scene in Dublin was like back then, the ideas behind the new album and lots more. Richie and Matty also play in Jape, who is part of the Landmarks series at the NCH on Sunday, September 14, where they will perform in full two albums: The Monkeys in the Zoo Have More Fun Than Me (2004) and Ritual (2008), a Choice Prize-winning album. We talk about those two albums, their influence, Floating, and always looking forward even when you're looking back. Buy Grushy: https://www.tenspotrecords.com/tenspotreleases // https://theredneckmanifesto.bandcamp.com/album/grushy-2 TRM live at Button Factory, Saturday, September 6: https://www.ticketmaster.ie/artist/947174?venueId=198299&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAactxpTMF7l3t-Fx7NJCPLkrC9wOBxK2XJgFfbpG_LFvOUpc6HU_XaQ_ph7Kzw_aem_gdt9d2rmjPluUIbibNWTOA Jape at NCH: Landmarks, Sunday, September 14: https://www.nch.ie/all-events-listing/nch-landmarks-jape-sep25/

From now on, the Best of the Month episode is Patreon-only. Public subscribers get the first 25 minutes or so. Patreon members get to hear the whole episode on their member feeds or on Patreon direct. Episode 263 comes at us fast with Niall Byrne and Andrea Cleary's monthly music recommendations.Chatting Indie Sleaze, a reason to be cheerful with the return of Adebisi Shank and a chat about club culture post-pandemic.Then we highlight new albums from Floating Points (this is the Jamie xx Substack post that annoyed Niall), and Henry Earnest along with songs from Bon Iver, Ahmed With Love, Maria Somerville, Freak Slug, FKA Twigs, Fionn Regan, Nilufer Yanya and a Teac Damsa Nobodaddy-inspired closing pick.Plus, TV, film and books we're enjoying in the What's Consuming You? corner.* Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and join our Discord communityListen on Apple | Android | ACAST | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){ cab.clickify(); }); Original Podcast with clickable words https://tinyurl.com/ylcmrgr4 Contact: irishlingos@gmail.com Two in court for an attack by a dog on a boy. Beirt os comhair cúirte faoi ionsaí a rinne madra ar bhuachaill. A woman and a man who pleaded guilty to charges related to the attack of a nine-year-old boy by a dog that left him with serious facial injuries are due to be sentenced next January. Tá pianbhreith le gearradh i mí Eanáir seo chugainn ar bhean agus ar fhear a phléadáil ciontach i gcúisimh a bhaineann le hionsaí a rinne madra ar bhuachaill naoi mbliana d'aois agus ar bhain drochghortuithe san éadan dó dá bharr. Both were before Wexford Circuit Court this morning. Bhí an bheirt os comhair Chúirt Chuarda Loch Garman ar maidin inniu. They are Karen Miller and Niall Byrne from Fernanna Cearta, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford. Sin iad Karen Miller agus Niall Byrne as Fearann na Ceárta, Inis Córthaidh, Co Loch Garman. Karen Miller pleaded guilty to two counts of endangering a person when a pit bull attacked Alejandro Mizsan on November 23, 2022 and another boy four days earlier. Phléadáil Karen Miller ciontach in dhá chúis a bhaineann le duine a chur i gcontúirt nuair a rinne tarbh-bhrocaire ionsaí ar Alejandro Mizsan ar an 23 Samhain 2022 agus ar bhuachaill eile ceithre lá roimhe sin. Niall Byrne pleaded guilty to inhumanely destroying a dog and is also accused of making threats to kill a person or people. Phléadáil Niall Byrne ciontach i madra a dhíothú go mídhaonnachtúil agus tá sé cúisithe freisin i mbagairtí a dhéanamh duine nó daoine a mharú. Niall Byrne was remanded in custody and Karen Miller was released on bail until 11 January 2024. Cuireadh Niall Byrne siar faoi choinneáil agus scaoileadh saor ar bannaí Karen Miller go dtí 11 Eanáir 2024. RTÉ News and Current Affairs Nuacht agus Cúrsaí Reatha RTÉ

Niall Byrne, creative director at Science in Public, joined Matthew with the latest science news of the week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne, creative director at Science in Public, joined Matthew with the latest science news of the week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Music journalist, Niall Byrne joined Kieran on the show to discuss Kendrick Lamar's success off the back of his two headline gigs in 3Arena in Dublin...

Niall Byrne from Science in Public joined Matthew with the latest science news of the week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne from Science in Public joined Matthew with the latest science news of the week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne from Science in Public joins Matthew Pantelis to discuss the latest science stories from the past week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More to learn about the human genome – and diversity. Are ‘COVID toes’ caused by lack of socks? The animals that bite the most people in North Qld. Microscopic worms on a chip could be trained to sniff out cancer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne from Science in Public joins Matthew Pantelis to talk all things science. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne is a Director at Science in Public. Niall joined Matthew to discuss: ‘The Dish’ finds ancient alien signal that isn’t. WA space radio will spot objects as small as 2 cm in orbit. A better way to fight superbugs When did modern horses emerge? Using lasers to measure stickiness – in just 20 micro seconds. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne is a Director at Science in Public. Niall joined Matthew to discuss: Pandas can have too much of a good thing How cats and tigers get their stripesSARS and COVID like viruses might jump to humans thousands of times a year The first tourist mission in spaceAt least a million Australians affected by eating disorders See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne is a Director at Science in Public. Niall joined Matthew to discuss: Bluetongue lizard versus deadly red-bellied black snakes Good news for some endangered animals Who can you trust? The chemistry of better chocolate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Niall Byrne is the Creative Director of Science in Public. He joined Matthew to discuss: Mammoth's epic travels preserved in tusk How old are we? Seven! “After the first three minutes, nothing of any interest would happen in the history of the universe.” Real milk, no cows needed: Lab-made dairy products are now a reality, and meat is on the way Swim with the Giant Australian Cuttlefish: virtual tour – online See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt is joined by guests to discuss the housing crisis and a generation of young people being worse off than their parents. Plus later on, Melvin Benn speaks to us about why he feels Electric Picnic could go ahead. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With the news that My Bloody Valentine are re-releasing their catalogue through Domino and that their music is finally on streaming services, Niall Byrne and Andrea Cleary revisit the Irish/English shoegaze band's classic 1991 record Loveless.

As we move towards a full year without live gigs, we are searching for a way to fill the void. Niall Byrne, Founder of Nialler9 and host of the Nialler9 podcast, is pointing us in the direction of the best gigs, recorded pre-pandemic, that can be watched back online - sit back, turn the volume up loud and pretend you're in a field!

In today's episode of Hustle Heartbreaks, Galia finally explains why she made the decision to protest against police brutality and racial injustice during corona, which was especially difficult seeing as she's pretty much become agoraphobic and scared of leaving the house. She then talks to today's guest Niall Byrne (aka Nialler9) who is a famous music writer, DJ,  podcaster, and all around wonderful person who has their shit together in a major way!  They discuss how corona has affected the music industry, awkward interviews, and the time he did support for The Knife and lost the run of himself. Today's episode has been edited by the amazing Aaron DiPiazza!  Find Niall here:  https://nialler9.com/ https://soundcloud.com/nialler9 https://open.spotify.com/user/nialler9 Find Denise Chaila here (amazing song at the end) https://denisechaila.bandcamp.com/   More Hustle Heartbreaks:  patreon.com/hustleheartbreaks HustleHeartbreaks.com facebook.com/HustleHeartbreaks Hotline/whatsapp: +1(812)269-6057 Instagram: @galiaarad    

The Redneck Manifesto are celebrating their 20th anniversary by playing a show at Vicar Street on Friday, November 30, supported by David Kitt's New Jackson and the Dublin Guitar Quartet. On the same day they also release their fifth album, The How. It's nine tracks long and it's so great. I talked to guitarists Niall Byrne and Matthew Bolger about what it's been like with the latter and Richie Egan - one third of the band - living in Sweden and how they make TRM work. We also discuss touring, the early years, recording the new album, how a Rednecks song comes together, and lots more.

On this week's episode, we're joined by Niall Byrne, the founder of Nialler9, the most-read Irish music blog. Read more about Nialler9 here: https://www.souldoubtmagazine.com/blog/2018/10/23/soul-doubt-podcast-nialler9 Follow Nialler9 on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/nialler9/ Follow Soul Doubt on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/souldoubtmagazine/ Purchase Soul Doubt Magazine 'Issue 2' here: https://www.souldoubtmagazine.com/shop/soul-doubt-issue-2 Follow our Irish hip-hop Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/sorashane/playlist/33MdM0maH47JYb3i0eVbeP?si=XNx-bglPTBWfoB9f_b6udw Join our Facebook group to network with creatives of all types in Dublin here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303676370205158/about/ This podcast is powered by https://www.audiohausdublin.com/ Thanks for watching!

We all want to take this chance to say, Welcome Back! to OMPS! Season 2 is finally here and we are excited to start it with John Powells score to Solo, A Star Wars Story. Before Brad, Kurt, and Alex get into that score they chat about the scores they have been listening to during the break. Kurt is still listening to Marco Beltramis A Quiet Place and Clint Mansells recent Hotel Artemis, while Alex has been listening to an older score (an awesome score!) for Stargate by David Arnold. Alex also brings up an excellent new score for Get Out by Michael Abels. Brad has been diving into some new scores for a while and brings up some interesting choices. One is an excellent score for an independent vampire exploitation movie called Live Evil by Austin Wintory (composer of video game soundtracks like Assassins Creed and Journey), along with new scores for In Darkness by Niall Byrne, and Tides of Fate by future-Captain Marvel composer, Pinar Toprak. All this before they start talking about one of the best scores of the year, Solo, A Star Wars Story. While the movie might not have done so well at the box office, it is undeniable that the score should sit as a champion accomplishment in the arena of film scores. Like John Debneys Cutthroat Island, John Powell has thrown every ounce of passion into this process and revealed that he has such a talent for creating memorable work, even when the film might not be successful. We are so glad you are back, and we are very excited to be back making episodes! We will be releasing episodes again every two weeks for Season 2, and promise a much bigger season than the last. Dont forget to leave a comment and let us know what you think. Thanks for dropping by and enjoy the show!

On this week's Off Topic podcast, we look at the business end of the Irish music industry. How difficult is it for new artists to become visible? How can they make money? and is talent alone enough to succeed? To answer these questions and many more, host Laurence Mackin is joined by DJ and music journalist Niall Byrne, musician Rhob Cunningham, Faction Records boss Ken Allen and Eleanor McGuinness of Pitch & Smith entertainment agency.

As Sounds From a Safe Harbour takes over Cork city for the weekend, Aisling chats to Niall Byrne aka Nialler9 about the free music trail he's curated around the city. Then, Eoghan and Caoilian join Aisling to talk about what they're looking forward to in Cork Opera House and elsewhere, then discuss Culture Night on Friday. Tweet us: @tpoeblog, @caoilianjsure and @aisooooo, or email thepointofeverything@gmail.com

Vinyl is back and Niall Byrne or Nialler9 as we know him, gave us the guide to going vinyl.

As we aren’t recording til wednesday night this week here are 2 interviews from some of our very early podcasts which you may have missed. The first is with Ed Thompson on FFP and the overall implications of the new rules for clubs both in terms of transfers and how they will be run. The second interview is from our first ever pod when we talked with Niall Byrne a former highly rated Irish LFC prospect on his time at the club, his experiences and how he felt when it didnt happen at LFC for him. Sound quality reflects our earlier recording equipment but the content is excellent, enjoy.