Steve Cummins

Kevin Cummins meets the duo, who have joined forces in new four-piece Yelling Bones
Myles McDonnell doesn’t have happy memories about the last time he released a record. Almost 20 years ago Whipping Boy, the band in which he had played bass for more than a decade, limped to an indignant finish with the release of their third album. “It wasn’t a very pleasant experience,” McDonnell says of the recording. “We split up in the middle of making it. The record was left in mid-air. Even finishing it...

By the metrics used to measure success in today’s music industry, Jonathon Ng is one of Europe’s fastest rising stars. The 22-year-old from Dublin may not be widely known in his home city, but in the world of online streaming he has stealthily built an international following as Eden, a purveyor of infectious, introspective and minimalist electro-pop.
On YouTube, videos for the seven tracks on Eden’s 2016 EP, I Think You Think Too Much of Me, have amassed more than 15 million views. That EP a...

★★★★★
It was in Hamlet that Shakespeare wrote of the importance of the playwright holding “the mirror up to nature”, but it is Richard III that most perfectly reflects the times we live in. As this historical tale of one man’s murderous quest for power plays out at the Abbey, Shakespeare’s work continues to confound with its timely topicality.
Richard III, bereft of conscience and paranoid of falling victim to the disloyalty he peddles, is only a social media account removed from a similarly ...

★★★★★
The Abbey Theatre is no place for the faint-hearted. As Marina Carr’s bleak but brilliant On Raftery’s Hill jolts audiences from the theatre’s main stage, David Ireland’s disturbing Cyprus Avenue leaves them moving for the exit, shaken and stirred. Ireland’s superb work tackles the complexity of identity in loyalist Ulster. It is laced with such lunacy that it’s difficult to know where to begin dissecting it.
Stephen Rea plays Eric, a middle-class Protestant from Belfast’s leafy Cyprus ...

When Donal Ryan famously spoke about his need to return to his civil service job to pay off his mortgage, despite having had a bestselling novel, the searing honesty of his comments shone through. Rather than try to maintain a successful self-image, the bestselling author of The Spinning Heart told it like it is — that being Ireland’s most acclaimed new writer did not bring financial security.
A year after those comments, Ryan is surprised by how far they have travelled. “I can’t believe anyo...

★★★★☆
There have been audible gasps and stunned silences each night this powerful adaptation of Louise O’Neill’s stirring novel on sexual violence has been staged. Tonight’s performance is no different. A silence lingers long after Lauren Coe delivers her final moving monologue as Emma O’Donovan, a teenager. The sense of shock among the audience is palpable. Many are in tears.
Collective moments like this are all too rare in modern theatre, but then few works have struck quite the same chord ...

★★★☆☆
The Public Dance Halls Act, introduced in 1935, was a draconian law effectively banning dances that operated without the sanction of the Irish clergy. It caused dancehalls to shut, curbed “foreign” music (such as jazz) and robbed a generation of shared spaces. Similar cultural erosion is at work today as venues and dance clubs across Dublin are closed to facilitate shiny new-builds.
It is these kinds of parallels that come to mind as the story of James (Jimmy) Gralton returns to the Abb...

It has been more than 25 years since Ash emerged from Downpatrick, Co Down, to become one of the most successful Irish bands of an era. The band members were 15 years old when they started and they were signed to a label by the time they were 17.
“Two weeks after leaving school, when we were 18 years old, we had our first hit single, which led to 18 Top 40 hits in the UK over the years and a couple of No 1 albums. We’re still doing the same thing,” says Tim Wheeler, the band’s affable frontma...

★★★★☆
Having sought intimate venues to showcase his forthcoming third solo album, the Button Factory was the perfect place for Johnny Marr to start his tour. So tightly packed was the audience that sweat seemed to drip from the walls as Marr bounced on stage for his first solo show in more than two years.
At one point someone passed out from the heat. He was not alone in being affected by the soaring temperatures. “Wow, this really is a hot place,” Marr said midway through his 21-song set. “T...

Whatever happened to my rock’n’roll? That thought resurfaced last week during the Rolling Stones’ startling set in Croke Park. It wasn’t the four ageing men on stage that brought Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s 2001 cult hit to mind — it was the scarcity of teenagers and twentysomethings in the stadium. Rock’n’roll may never die, but it is certainly fading in relevance for a new generation.
Of the four concerts in Croker this year, the Stones will be the only rock group to pitch up. Our two big...

There’s a scene in My Name Is Joe, the 1998 Ken Loach film, that has stayed in the memory of Frank Berry. Joe, a recovering alcoholic played with unnerving authority by Peter Mullan, sees his life once again teeter on the edge when it looks to have been improving. “It’s so unfair,” he says with a gasp, as if suffocating by the constant struggle of his reality.
“I remember that scene striking me,” Berry tells me from his home in Co Wicklow. “I think I saw My Name Is Joe four times at the Scree...

Nina Simone once asked: “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” Yet for long periods it seemed many musicians, writers and film-makers were intent on proving her wrong.
Over the past 20 years there has been a dearth of young, mainstream artists making work that holds a mirror to the issues of the day. Too often it has been left to the older generation — people such as Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Billy Bragg — to wave the flag of protest.
That has begun to shift: the divisi...

★★★★☆
Whether it’s the village outcast, the Traveller community or those hit hardest by the recession, Donal Ryan has always sought to write compassionately about those pushed to the fringes of society.
In his fifth work of fiction he ruminates ever more on the nature of empathy. From a Low and Quiet Sea is full of lost characters torn apart by situations beyond their control, their torment inflicted on them by others. Ryan’s novel starts in Syria and moves to Tipperary and Limerick as it dra...

★★★☆☆
Rejjie Snow is well acquainted with the weight of expectation. The Drumcondra-born rapper has carried the burden since a deal with Elton John’s Rocket Music in 2013 led to a tour with Madonna two years later. Snow’s progress since hasn’t quite matched such a profile, although that is changing. Last month’s debut album, Dear Annie, has drawn international acclaim and ignited the 24-year-old’s career.
Anticipation is high before this sold-out homecoming show, although you wouldn’t think i...

I’ve never walked out of a match early before. Getting on the road ahead of the thousands around me has never outweighed the fear of missing that last-minute moment of magic.
Ireland’s 5-1 humiliation by Denmark in the World Cup play-off was different, however. I left in the 73rd minute, just as Christian Eriksen ran towards the Bath Avenue end to celebrate his hat-trick and Denmark’s fourth goal. In truth, I should have walked out about an hour earlier. When Denmark went 2-1 ahead I knew the...