The writer and former singer is on form with this soulful novel about love, friendship and redemption

I was packing a bag when the phone rang. Deirdre’s name, one of U2’s people, came up. “Typical,” I swore to myself. “It’s probably the Bono interview I’ve been angling after for years!” Ol’ Bug Eyes f...

It’s tricky, if not near impossible, to keep things under wraps in this information-saturated age, but U2 just about managed it.

Amidst all the great music, Lucinda Williams also took time to rail at Trump and the awful goings-on in her homeland. And one of Rory Gallagher's guitars even made it to the stage

Hothouse Flowers are joined by several special guests, from Susan O’Neill to Steve Wall and more

Leonard Cohen was only nine when his father passed away. After the funeral, the boy wrote his first poem which he placed in one of his father’s bowties and buried in the back garden, “confronting unha...

My mother remembers the death of JFK being announced during a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. She says she left the cinema on O’Connell Street in shock at the loss of the American president...

Emmylou Harris impressed in Dublin with a combination of her own songs and well-chosen covers from the likes of Gram Parsons and Gillian Welch

Far be it from me to suggest you fashion a tinfoil hat but your phone is listening to you. The Ma asked about a Christmas gift and I suggested a luxury timepiece for a laugh. Cue an instant bombardmen...

Pat Carty looks back at Pink Floyd's iconic album, Wish You Were Here.

Pat Carty reviews Insomnia, the posthumously released second memoir from The Band's Robbie Robertson.

After almost eight months in a West End production of M Butterfly, Anthony Hopkins was “bored and irritable” and fed up with “doing the same thing night in and night out” for what would become his fin...

Dealing with failure is one thing but handling success is likely another matter altogether. Just imagine for a minute that at 27 you’ve already created a peerless body of musical work that literally c...

Anyone with any sense joins a band as a teenager and dreams big. Once reality lashes out a few kicks, the majority get on with their lives but that’s not how it panned out for Downpatrick native Tim W...

"How all deluxe releases should be done"

It might seem obvious, but it’s OK not to like things. It’s fine not to like a presidential candidate or the last Mission Impossible movie (bit slow to kick off, I felt). What is not OK is the way peo...

The review of the film of the book about the making of Bruce Springsteen's bleak masterpiece, Nebraska

Highly enjoyable read doesn’t shy away from discussing racism, money or personal struggles

Richard Hawley revisited his classic Coles Corner album for a fine gig in Dublin

Much like the one that surrounds The Beatles, the Elvis Presley book industry shows no sign of abatement. This year alone has seen, amongst others, Preston Lauterbach’s excellent examination of the mu...

Pat Carty on Bruce Springsteen's legendary album Born To Run, which turns 50.

Josh Homme was having a great time, diving over the barricade and wading through the crowd

The back cover of this history of New York calls it “a real-life Bonfire of the Vanities”. Tom Wolfe’s bestselling 1987 novel about a bond trader who comes a cropper in a very serious way is also refe...

Controversy in the book world, like the debate around the veracity of The Salt Path, is nothing new. Excerpts from Konrad Kujau’s faked Hitler Diaries were published through various outlets in the 198...

Whatever happened to the likely lads? If you’re old enough to remember the 1990s, then I’m afraid at this point you are officially getting on a bit. It’s now 31 years since Oasis released their debut ...

The weather gods may not have been on his side, but Leon Bridges still delivered in Dublin

After steering Celtic rock heroes Horslips’s unique course, Eamon Carr made a poacher/gamekeeper transition and returned to writing to earn his bread. The problem with interrogating musicians is that ...