Arriving early can be a double-edged sword. For a start, you nab the best spot stage front, get to enjoy a quiet pint and the DJ warming up with the help of "Led Zep 4". In the case of Cyprus Avenue,you also get to visit probably the cleanest toilets anywhere on the club circuit. All of which are surely plus points on the gig-going rate-o-meter.
But boy do you suffer the downside as well. Like when you have to sit through (an actually OK) acoustic blues spot from a local singer/ songwriter who has plainly brought all twenty members of his fan club with him. They proceed to cheer his every move and would surely do so should his trousers make repeated parping noises. Your reviewer becomes steadily irked.
This state of mind worsens when confronted by the dismal support band proper CHLOROFORM. To misquote Winston Churchill, never was a support band so aptly named.
It's not really that they're bad as such. Sure, their proficient, but pedestrian blues-rock has been ground into the dirt many times since the glory days of Hendrix and Cream, but it's not really the playing per se. It's the singer. He shuffles around the stage like a constipated Paul Rodgers, bellows the usual waffly cliches like "I neeed yoou-ooo-ooh bayy-ayy-aybbee" DURING EVERY SINGLE SONG and introduces songs that drip with charisma (NOT) with nuggets like: "This one's a bit different like, there's a bit o' rap in it". Oh whoopy fuckin' doo. Chloroform truly make you gag and five minutes in I'm bored out of my skull. By the time they limp to a finish, your reviewer is seriously stewing in his own juice.
So thank God for THE DUKE SPIRIT and a bit of presence at last. This is the hotly-tipped London quintet's first Irish gig since the massive Oxegen Festival during the summer and, despite the rigours of the "fourteen hour journey without sleep", they keep muttering about, they are wired and ready.
They're immediately loud and attention-grabbing. "Howling" kicks us off, and it's stomping, hypnotic and drum heavy. Its' drama hits at gut level and already feisty front fox Leila Moss is on intimate dating terms with her mike stand. With her blonde, ice maiden looks, she's inevitably begun to attract the Debbie Harry comparisons, but vocally at least, her slurry drawl recalls a young Siouxsie Sioux more than anyone tonight.
Initially, Leila is the obvious focal point with The Duke Spirit, and the lads make like they're card carrying members of Sleeperbloke International, simply concentrating on the agreeably ear-bleeding rumble during the first few songs. Some of which, it must be said, do adhere a little too closely to ye olde bog standard shoegazing mores to really stand apart.
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Things change, though, when guitarist Luke Ford introduces "Lion Rip" (I think this is the title) as "a slow one." It's not. It's intense, tips its' fedora to The Stooges and seems to animate the boys in the process. Second guitarist Dan Higgins especially feels the force and ends the song ripping the most violent screes of feedback from his guitar we've heard since Kevin Shields locked himself away.
Fom there on, they really take off. One tune begins as a moody drone and concludes in arc-ing guitar flak weirdly akin to Depeche Mode's "I Feel You", while in new single "Cuts Across The Land" thay have their best song to date. With Leila again adopting her best Siouxsie whine, the guitars circle and ensnare and feed off drummer Olly Betts' feral pounding to create something truly magnificent. It should really turn heads on record.
The crowd are suitably appreciative by this stage, and by the time the Dukes hit the white-hot Sonic Youth-isms of closer "Red Weather", even taciturn bassist Toby Butler is giving it some Paul Simonon attitude as they go for the final burn. They're confident enough to ignore fine recent single "Dark Is Light Enough" and depart after an all-too brief, yet somehow just right 40 minutes. There's no encore and your reviewer's black mood has lightened pretty considerably.
At the moment, The Duke Spirit haven't enough truly memorable songs to grab the future by the hand and lead in into any corner they so choose. However, in Leila they have a surefire, pouty star stagefront, and if they can produce more songs of the calibre of the two singles, they could yet evoke the majesty of their name and have loyal subjects aplenty falling at their feet.
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