BASHT. - Poor Advice

Over the last decade, the green, white and orange tricolour has been flying high, propelled by a formidable gust of creativity. Fontaines D.C., Gilla Band and Gurriers have all released an album this year, and other acts such as Murder Capital, Just Mustard and Bleech are growing year on year. It's clear, then, that some music is born of rage, while other music learns to turn itself into something more uncomfortable: an unanswered question, a crack in the system of inherited certainties that no longer seem so obvious.

With "Poor Advice", the debut from Dublin's Basht., post-punk once again becomes the language of a generation that is starting to doubt the voices that grew up inside its own head. The voices of the Church, the State and its institutions. The ones that teach you to bow your head and call obedience a virtue.
Produced by Ali Chant (to name just a few of his many production credits: Yard Act, King Hannah and PJ Harvey), the record moves between alternative rock, gothic shadows and grunge tension, alternating stifling build-ups with sudden guitar explosions. Jack Leavey's voice seems to come from a room where something went wrong a long time ago: restrained, menacing, capable of turning melancholy into a scream, yet tender too. Basht. know how to balance silence and detonation, crafting songs that don't just vent frustration but try to give it a shape.

"Dive" opens the record with a restless gait, letting drums and guitars build up pressure before plunging into an almost apocalyptic crescendo. "Perfume" and "Superchurch" grapple with the legacy of Irish Catholicism, that system of guilt and discipline that keeps creeping back into the conscience even once you try to shake it off (as a certain Sinéad O'Connor also reminded us). On "Keira Knightley", by contrast, romantic shipwreck becomes a pop obsession, while "Terror TV" hides beneath a hypnotic riff a fierce critique of media overexposure and our ever-growing numbness to violence.
"Poor Advice" finds some of its finest moments, though, when it lets fragility and fury coexist. "Moth" builds slowly, eventually turning fear of the other into an almost disarming confession. "Kids Vs Guns", dedicated to the Palestinian tragedy, drops any ambiguity: it's a painful indictment of a world capable of normalising the suffering of those who haven't even had the chance to live yet. "Vermillion Reptilian" and "Circadia" broaden the sonic landscape, even if in places a few all-too-recognisable influences surface, along with a personality still in the process of being consolidated. But it's the title track, in the end, that lets a sliver of light filter through the concrete. Not a solution, nor an easy redemption, but the possibility of still holding on.

"Poor Advice" stands out confidently on the alternative music scene; its urgency is genuine, and it keeps the record from ever becoming mere background noise. It tells us that sometimes growing up means realising the advice we were given was wrong, and it urges us to finally find the courage to disobey.

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23/10/2026