While old-fashioned values like grit and graft might be scorned in what passes for the modern day music industry, an ability to captivate an audience is still an absolute must at grass roots level.
It’s a quality both bands on this bill tonight have in spades, even though they come from (seemingly) opposing ends of the Folk-Roots spectrum. Up first we have Cork/ Skibbereen alliance NELSON MANDOLA (sic). From what I can gather, they’ve only been playing live for nine months or so, but they have learnt their craft quickly and even though they have barely half an hour tonight, they waste not a second of it.
With a line-up featuring Colm Hayes (acoustic guitar), Michael Grace (mandolin/ acoustic guitar), Paddy Kelly (mandolin) and Dorian Kelly on Mandola (imagine a giant, Big Daddy mandolin), there’s nary a sniff of a rhythm section or electric instrumentation, yet this quartet play with a fierce intuition that over-rides the need for either. Inevitably, Irish folk comparisons with the fiery likes of Luke Kelly will be bandied around in future, but these boys are equally convincing whether attacking dextrous jigs and reels (‘The Swedish Jig’), Dave Swarbrick-style workouts (‘Raise a Glass’) or punchy Folk-Pop numbers like ‘The Way These Things Do’ and the excellent ‘My Greatest Day.’ Add in some enviable four-part harmonies and they’re shaping up to be a truly incredible string band. More please, and soon.
If you follow the club and festival circuit in Ireland at all, you can’t have failed to notice the name JOHN BLEK & THE RATS doing the rounds up and down the country over the past couple of years. Doing in the time-honoured way and playing every nook and cranny still gets my vote and the results of playing these tunes out of their skins since 2009 is there for all to hear tonight. They play a seriously impressive 18-song set where, as the old adage goes, every one’s a winner.
The band has been reconfigured since I last saw them during the summer of 2010. A new bassist and lead guitarist/ mandolin maestro Patrick Freeman have been drafted in and the new Rats are a tight, versatile outfit, capable of bouts of sustained Roots rockin’ and also painting in subtler colours when required. They’re the ideal vehicle for the tall, charismatic John Blek to hitch his finely-crafted songs to and if they can sustain the momentum they are pushing at present, then it’s hard to imagine what could derail them.
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While there are a couple of excellent downloadable EPS available through Bandcamp, the band’s first ‘official’ single ‘The Tide Will Rise Again’ is only just out now. Attacked with pride and gusto tonight, the title track is just one of several impressive songs they have worked up commenting on the current economic crisis. With both ‘Take Me Home’ and the self-explanatory ‘Trying Times’ they have two equally defiant anthems, both of which take a modern slant on the great protest song tradition and come out with knuckles bared.
But the political is finely balanced by the personal in John Blek’s songs and, as the set unfolds, catchy Folk-Rockers like ‘Leave Your Love at the Door’ rub shoulders with stylish, Dylan-esque affairs (‘Cold Winter’) and a brace of restless road songs (‘The Cities Keep Changing’, ‘Old St. Catherine’) which have an almost Jack Kerouac-style desire to keep moving.
As the sets heads towards its’ conclusion, they drink deep from the Gospel well with the redemptive, call and response number ‘Lord! Don’t Leave Me’ and finally bring it all back home with ‘I’ll Wait for You.’ A surprise encore finds Blek switching to banjo for a duet with Freeman on the ‘My Light Went Out’: a gem of an extra track from the flipside of the new single. It provides the ideal conclusion to a rapturously received set.
While John Blek & The Rats are the undoubted stars tonight, both of these bands are indeed captivating live acts destined for bigger and better things. I’d seriously suggest you see them while you can still see the whites of their eyes. You don’t need to be a genius to realise they’ll not stay working the small venue circuit for too much longer.
John Blek & The Rats MySpace
Nelson Mandola Facebook page
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