Hello and introduction

Hello and welcome to everyone reading this! This is my online archive for all my music reviews for Belfast and Northern Ireland. I will be updating this as I write them.

If you wish to have a piece reviewed, please email me at benjaminjlmagee@gmail.com

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Gareth Dunlop - Many Moons Ago

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Gareth Dunlop - Many Moons Ago  Belfast journeyman Gareth Dunlop’s new EP Many Moons Ago comes from a place of nostalgia and love. Inspired by his travels between his hometown and Nashville, Many Moons… is as much about heartbreak as it is about love. Poetic and dark, Dunlop is not reinventing the wheel on his new EP, sticking to his strengths and writing a fantastic set of mist-shrouded ballads. Opener Devil Like You begins with a slow gothic riff that would be at home on a Nick Cave record. Dunlop's low, gravely vocals whisper out amidst the music, like fog over a lake. Dunlop ’s steady strumming acts as a hair-raising high point to the lyrical lows, while the plucked strings emit a low muted air of wickedness. Dunlop's signature brand of mesmerising scores and lulling vocals create a unique almost vaudevillian genre of folk that left me genuinely fearful. The whole EP is not given over eerie sensibility, however, as standouts Cant Stand Myself and Blind ...
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Sarah McCreedy - Older

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Sarah McCreedy - Older  Flush as the North is with musical talent, singer/songwriters have long been a staple of the scene and remain one of our biggest cultural exports. Enter Co. Down hopeful Sarah McCreedy, who fits the mould of the modern singer/songwriter by combining accomplished musical aptitude with an impressive composition in her debut single Older. Carpeted by nostalgia, Older implies a level of comprehension by McCreedy that almost makes it unfair to consider the single a debut. Fully formed and confident, there is little room for complaint, nor is there evidence of unused potential. The opening of Older featured a measured and muted rhythmic strumming that is almost soporific in nature before McCreedy comes in, her vocals beginning barely louder than a whisper before gathering both traction and weight. As mentioned before, the song relies heavily on nostalgia and the march of time, but it is not without its wit. McCreedy informs the listener during the cho...
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Ariana Grande - thank u, next

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Ariana Grande - thank u, next “I understand to a lot of people I'm not a real person.” A recent interview concerning her newest album saw pop superstar Ariana Grande utter these words on the record. When I reached this point of the transcript, I grimaced loudly in my chair. The next line - “But at the end of the day, these are people and relationships. It's real shit to me.” This has always been the case for Grande's persona. The private and public. The dominant and the innocent. The world-conquering pop star and the girl who fell so head over heels, she got engaged after only a few months. For what seems like her entire career, AG has been a passenger in the car as regards to her public perception (“I read the things they write about me. Hear what they're sayin’ on the TV, it's crazy. It’s gettin' hard for them to shock me” - ‘ Fake Smiles ’). Too often have people shaped the narrative for her, be it the cruelly unfair blame she received for the...
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