Foggy Notions

I love music writing. I love doing it (not very well). Mostly I love reading it. The web has formed in me a whole new appreciation for quality music coverage. Magazines, however, are almost always awful.

I picked up a (slightly out of date) copy of Foggy Notions the other day, a new (relaunched?) music magazine produced in Ireland. I was hugely impressed. This country, possibly due to our small size, seems incapable of maintaining a lot of the institutions larger countries take for granted. A decent music scene, a decent film industry, good journalism. The list goes on. So when you encounter an Irish music magazine on the shelves you expect it to be shit, because that’s all we ever seem to manage. Sorry, but it is. Hotpress, anybody?

The Hotpress website just asked me to pay them to read an interview with Sheana Keane. It’s so rock n’ roll I think I might die.

Published by Leagues O’ Toole (of No Disco), Foggy Notions focuses mainly on interviews along with a few pages of reviews and events. Great graphic work and clean typography printed on matt paper make it a pleasure to flick through. There’s also a compilation CD of bands featured inside. Possibly the reason it made such an impression on me was the selection of groups being interviewed in the issue I picked up. Grizzly Bear, Akron/Family, Tunng, The Essex Green are all bands I’ve been enjoying lately. The writing is good. Some of the articles come across as a little fanboy-ish, but I can’t really complain; they’re focusing on stuff they like.

One of the really nice things about the magazine is the clear distinction between the content pages and advertisements. A lot of specialised architecture magazines come into our house. In general they are impressively laid out, with amazing photography and a high level of articulation. The problem is the ads are also quality productions, scattered throughout content pages, breaking up articles and interrupting flow. As often as not you drop a piece rather than sift through endless, confusing junk to get to the few columns of text hidden away in the corner. Foggy Notions hands you clarity of content. It’s worth a lot.

Congratulations, people. You’ve produced the first Irish music magazine I would not be embarrassed to be seen reading on the bus. Website could use some work, though.