THERE HAS been a bit of a caravan of musical delights traversing the country over the past fortnight or so. Made up of three segments, the caravan is laden with everything from jangly pop synth to skeleton-shaking bass riffs. It hurtles through music venues, shocking and awing, with perfect melodic precision. Yes, the caravan is rare animal that is the joint Irish tour of Jape, And So I Watch You From Afar and Fionn Regan.
The announcement of this Arts Council funded project has to have been one of the sweetest sounds to any Irish music lover’s ears this year. These three acts, so diverse in genre and performance, have to be seen as some of the most successful and talented musicians to come out of the country in the past few years. As a single, Jape’s much loved track ‘Floating’ is probably as good as any alt-pop tune produced anywhere in the world in the past decade. Fionn Regan has achieved international renown and approval as the author of songs such as ‘Be Good or Be Gone’ and ‘Put a Penny in the Slot’. Impressed audiences across America and Europe have had their ears assaulted by And So I Watch You From Afar for the past while as the band capitalises on the success of their eponymous debut album last year, a release which is already being seen as a post-rock masterpiece. All under the same roof, one night, for less than the price of the deluxe edition of Boyzone’s Greatest Hits. Or 20 Wibbly Wobbly Wonders.
I caught the tour in Limerick last Saturday, on a night so enthusiastically cold that the air felt like a solid entity, clinging and crisp. Winter begins, and after a long break it stretches and flexes, trying to remember how to make things icy. The paths were wet, dark, deserted. Christ, it was cold. We went inside.
The opening act was a local Limerick outfit whose set was somewhat of a chore to stand through. Approximately 35% of the band’s time was made up of trying to awkwardly draw attention to their merch stand at the back, 40% went to the frontman tuning up and the remaining 25% was devoted to some uninspiringly generic-sounding mulch. But who cared? The place was warm and mercifully free from the reach of Lil Wayne, while outside people were probably having their blood turned to icy slush while having the Carter III forced through their ears…
Jape played first. I had seen frontman, Richie Egan, play live in another guise as bassist of the Redneck Manifesto before (they were fookin’ deadly), and expected good things from the 2009 Choice Prize ‘Album of the Year’ winners. I wasn’t disappointed. When Jape hits those infectious synth beats, it’s as though a light turns on around the venue. The light is very soft, and warm and red, like a discotheque being fried in dance. New tunes, familiar tunes, Jape hit all of them, and enjoyed doing it as well.
Jape – Apple in an Orchard
Watching Egan sway his way around keyboard and guitar, it was plain to see how truly passionate he is about performing (not to mention producing, as well as Jape and the Redneck Manifesto, he launched another synth-based project earlier this year - Visionair – and has contributed to Adebisi Shank’s latest album). The set ended with raucously well-received renditions of ‘Floating’ and ‘I Was a Man’. Nice to note that despite these being Jape’s most obviously well-known tracks, the other lesser fawned-over tracks also got a good reception. Thumbs up to Jape so.
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Fionn Regan was next. This was going to be interesting, because Fionn Regan comes across as being very calm, collected and lyrically deep, the type of person who might ordinarily be strumming chords of heartbreak into, say, a smoky Parisian café, only that most people were now drunk and getting blearily-eyed scattered and inclined to call for ‘tunes’. Those who know the music of Fionn Regan will know that the man is not inclined to do the ‘tunes’ bit, which is a good thing. What is not good is when Fionn announces to the audience that he will be performing solo without the band tonight and the crowd continues to buzz and humm inappropriately. Regan had a surprisingly strong fan base at the gig, but unfortunately they did not seem to grasp the idea that the greatest compliment that one can pay to a solo acoustic performer is to simply shut up and listen. They screamed and wailed, flashed cameras and hugged noisily and when Regan finally finished, he had a right to look as pissed off as he did. It’s a perennial problem; how to present late-night solo acoustic music? It’s hard to enjoy a set when it’s patently obvious that the performer is not, but the performance did not lack passion or talent.
The final set of the evening, lights down and a creeping excitement. And So I Watch You From Afar were about to play. The band have a reputation for being incredibly loud live, but this alone cannot prepare you. It’s not loudness in the sense that we know it, ear-splitting and annoying, it’s something thicker and sticky. You get wrapped in it and can’t do a thing but breathe and flail until the set ends. The notes and riffs are enormous yet gentle, natural and deep, like soil moving. It probably is being overly hyperbolic to compare the music of ASIWYFA to the shifting of the tectonic plates, but the ploughing of fields is more acceptable. Huge furrows rose and fell with stop-start melody and a black rainstorm of drumming. The playing was immense, fast and structured and tempestuous, shedding a lot of the mellow ‘instrumental Sigur Ros’ vibes evident on some of the longer tracks on the album. Each time a crescendo was reached and played out, the audience would gasp and look around breathlessly for an instant, before the onslaught of yet another rippling bassline and charged guitar note being wrenched from the depths overcame them. When the lights finally came on, they revealed sweat and hair everywhere, and a floating ringing sound which gave everyone a shell-shocked look. We had seen the trenches.
The tour plays it last date tonight (November 20) in Whelan’s. I sincerely hope it’s not the last of its kind.
And So I Watch You From Afar – Straight Through The Sun
This is ASIWYFA’s latest single, to be officially released on November 29th along with the B-side ‘Without a Fuckin’ Scratch’. You can download it in exchange for some social media whoring here. This sounds much, much better live.
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Last Monday, Local Natives (Californian, hip, current darlings of the music press) played in Whelan’s of Dublin. Had tickets, but took the concept of a fashionably late entrance a bit too far and missed the entire fucking thing. This saves you having to read another winding and embarrassing review.
Angkorwat – Early EP
Angkorwat is the wonderful crafter of Irish electronica Niamh Corcoran (no relation) and she has just released a new EP, Early. You can stream above, follow the link to download it for free, and read an interesting interview with Ms Corcoran here.
Early songs written with the very minimum of technical knowledge + proud of it.
Angkorwat is a pop experiment by Niamh Corcoran [Dublin, Ireland]. starting out as a classical musician, she de-trained and started at square one, composing basic melodies on her Macbook keys. This produced interesting results. Influences include hidden histories, stendhal syndrome, cocteau twins, extreme moods, long wave radio atlantic 252, synesthesia, Chicago/Detroit, remorse, mothers, daughters.
- from the Bandcamp page.
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