It's an emotional one tonight. Local boys STANLEY SUPER 800 have been toiling over their second album (the eagerly-awaited 'Louder & Clearer') for the past couple of years and with their new single 'Gatecrashing' all over the local airwaves and Ireland in the grip of a lengthy heatwave we're all set for a memorable show at the cavernous Half Moon.
Not that impressive opening act THE GORGEOUS COLOURS are keen to let them have it all their way. This reviewer has yet to visit their MySpace, but if the 'officially' recorded versions of the songs they trot out during a confident and compact 30 minutes tonight equal them, then it will have been worth the wait, for these unassuming, but clearly ambitious young Dublin-based bucks have plenty going for them.
Visually, they're arresting without trying too hard thanks to a profusion of beards, primary colour sweaters and Oxfam suits and have clearly grown in confidence thanks to a (very) recent run of support shows with fellow ear-catching Dubs, The Immediate. The same, instrument-swapping prodigies are an easy comparison to fall back upon where t'Colours are concerned, too, though first impressions suggests the Gorgeous ones prefer to remain on the slightly more linear and catchy side of the 'idiosyncratic pop' divide.
Song titles such as 'We Are' and 'A Means To An End' (by no means the Joy Division one of the same name) come springing to mind several days after the event. Besides, any support band that can get their audience to do an a capella/ barbershop take of the intro line of their closing tune ("Aah...AAHH...AAAAHHHHH!!!") like The Gorgeous Colours do are going places, believe me. In the near future, the Irish indie scene will be painting it anything but black, it seems.
Lesser bands would be spooked by such an encouraging curtain raiser, but not STANLEY SUPER 800. For those of you still to be initiated, this versatile quartet led by disarmingly brilliant singer/ songwriter/ guitarist Stan O'Sullivan have been lurking on the fringes of wider national acceptance for the past couple of years and seasoned W&H watchers will already know just how highly we regard them.
Their second album 'Louder & Clearer' will be released on the Sofa Records label (www.sofarecords.ie ) in June and cracking new single 'Gatcecrashing' has already made it to discerning shops and radio stations around the country. We get a sneak preview of the promo video (featuring an impressive cameo from drummer Dave Hackett) before SS800'S set begins and it's not unfair to say that the atmosphere's pretty charged by the time they come on and slide into one of the new album's three key instrumentals, the enigmatic 'A23' with both Tosh O'Sullivan and Stan hunched over keyboards.
Stan's a little more ebullient and vocal between songs than usual tonight and suggests they've "got to get the weirder ones out of the way early on" before cue-ing the band to smash into the dark, neo-psychedelic world of the heavy, opaque 'Love x3' and a typically gorgeous and precise 'Dark Angel' which - as usual - sounds pretty and slightly unsettling all at once. The fact these are accepted by the faithful with the same zeal as ensuing long-term fave 'Summer In The City' shows just how seamlessly the new songs have fitted into the band's ever-morphing live set.
|
In fact, they're keen to showcase virtually all of the new songs and it's a joy to hear tracks like 'Hello' and 'Stars Come Out' live for the first time tonight. The former is muscular, coy and anthemic with the guitars cranked to the max while 'Stars Come Out' finds Stan and Tosh again giving it some Death In Vegas with the twin keyboards while Flor Rahilly drives the tune along with the Mother of all fuzz basslines. It's euphoric as hell and straddles that rock/trance crossover line the Stans have made their own over the past couple of years.
The new material doesn't end with the new album, either, as they wheel out a great new blast of a tune with lyrics attacking bands who simply regurgitate thes likes of Led Zeppelin. The fact the tune itself sounds like one of the best songs Nirvana/ Led Zep never wrote is, of course, surely the point. It's ace, anyway, as is the punchy uppercut of new single 'Gatecrashing' and the Maurice O'Keeffe-influenced 'South Wind' which - to these ears - still sounds very like Joy Division's 'Incubation'. And I've still no problem with that.
The euphoria remains at scorch level for the encore which finds Stan - amazingly - coming out to launch into the beautiful, low-key romanticism of 'Only You'. It's so delicate you barely notice the rest of the band entering to flesh out the second part of the tune, but by the time they've grabbed the closing 'Rolled Up In Gold' by the jugular no-one in here wants to let them go.
Actually, it's only now that W&H check their watches to discover that the clock's coming round to 2 o'clock, but such is the exhilarating power that rock'n'roll (after all the changes its' been put through and diminishing returns its' often guilty of) can still be capable of when the practitioners are aligned in heart and mind and purpose. Regardless of trends, Stanley Super 800 are that rarity: a truly ORIGINAL band. Let's cherish them while we can.
|
