Vicky Greer

On a shelf in my bedroom, I have a stack of concert tickets, now repurposed as bookmarks. The oldest is from 2016 when I saw Biffy Clyro play the SSE Arena in Belfast, formerly known as The Odyssey. It was my first ever standing gig, and according to the price printed on the bottom of the ticket, it cost me £34.50.
I haven’t actually been back to the venue since; the sound quality there is average at best. But when blink-182 announced...

Let me introduce you to Bob Vylan. No, not Dylan. Vylan. The very best of grime-punk. Don’t get confused. You’ve probably seen them live already, since they spent the last year working their way up and down the country. Bobby Vylan on vocal duty, Bobbie Vylan on drums. Again, don’t get confused.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing one of their game-changing live performances yet, then get ready to meet your new favourite band. The Bobs have taken the incendiary roots of punk and mixed i...

An interview with The Mary Wallopers for The Rodeo magazine (print)

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Olivia Rodrigo’s rise to fame in 2021 was a sight, and a joy, to behold. Before January of that year, she was known only as an up-and-coming teenage Disney star with her role in the ridiculously-titled High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Then along came driver’s l...

Taken from our first ever print issue
Everyone has had a different experience of the last year and a half. While some of us sat at home, endlessly scrolling through Twitter, others were releasing a near-constant stream of new music. And by ‘others’, I mean Will Gould. After the critical acclaim and soaring success of last summer’s Sex, Death & The Infinite Void, the Creeper frontman gave some time to his latest goth-punk project Salem, with whom he has put out two EPs since last October. We s...

As much as we want to believe that rock music is a utopia free from society’s ills, there’s a dark history of misogyny in the industry, with generations of female artists ignored, belittled and harassed as they’ve come up through the scene. But in the wealth of music books that have been published in recent years, more and more of these women have been making their voices heard.
From female musicians telling their stories in their own words, to detailed explorations of the scenes that were bu...

'We really poured all of ourselves into Death by Rock and Roll - and that includes production'
The Pretty Reckless have had a hard time these past couple of years. After losing their close friend Chris Cornell to suicide in 2017, their world got even darker less than a year later when the news broke that their long-time producer Kato Khandwala had been killed in a motorcycle accident. In the midst of such grief and trauma, there was a time when making new music was unthinkable. But out of the...

Given their impact on alternative culture, it’s hard to believe that Paramore have only released five albums since their debut landed in 2005. Since then, the Franklin, Tennessee group have had quite the journey, becoming one of the landmark emo bands of the 2000s, indulging in a brief flirtation with synth-pop, losing bands members, and going on hiatus, before returning recently to make the most highly anticipated comeback of the year with their new single This Is Why.
Each album has built o...

On Irishness, punk + making space
M(h)aol had a fairly conventional start as a band, despite the complex spelling of their name. Forming in Dublin all the way back in 2015, they put out a single and performed in small venues around the city.
But it took a lengthy hiatus and band members spreading out from Dublin all across the map for Róisín, Constance, Jamie, Zoe and Sean to reach their full, unbridled potential as the M(h)aol we know today. We sat down with drummer and founding member Const...

Release date: 24 March 2023
9/10
(Albums)
Death looms everywhere on Depeche Mode’s new album.
It’s no real surprise, given that it’s called Memento Mori. First conceived in the early days of the pandemic, it marks the band’s first release as a duo after the passing of founding member Andy Fletcher last year. It isn’t a memorial album, since work began long before Fletcher’s death, but there’s a palpable grief and tragedy radiating throughout. Depeche Mode – like most of us – have gone through...

At the time of writing, I’ve read 57 books in 2021. It’s been my most productive year for reading by Goodreads standards and the year where I’ve been the most mindful about my reading habits.
Instead of just falling into the same genres and authors that I read every year, I tried to push myself and explore new challenges. The result was my most exciting and engaging year of reading, all because I made an effort to change my habits.
Here are some of the ways I challenged myself in 2021, with a...

Finally, a nice surprise in 2021. Today, Nick Cave released surprise album Carnage in collaboration with Bad Seed Warren Ellis. The project was first teased in January on Cave’s personal Q&A blog Red Hand Files, but no information was given except that it was “a brutal but very beautiful record embedded in a communal catastrophe”. Today, Cave and Ellis surprised fans with the unexpected release.
Opening number Hand of God' is as sudden and urgent as the album drop itself, if not more so. Ther...

Interview with Marlon Williams for The Rodeo vol. 16

'I think guitar music has always been the antidote'
It’s a good time to be in an alternative band in Dublin. It’s a good time to be in an alternative band anywhere, seeing the latest trend of guitar albums taking over the album charts across the UK and Ireland. With Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital and Pillow Queens as their contemporaries, Inhaler have gigged their way to being one of the hottest new bands around. Their upcoming first album, It Won’t Always Be Like This, is already being h...