The Goo 1
FEB '25 RÓIS – Workman’s Cellar - Ryan Kelly Anci
ent meets the new. RÓIS took to the stage at Workman’s Cellar as part of her Irish Wake Tour. Halloween decorations framed the venue in line with Samhain. It’s the ideal intimate space for a gig, bar the fake cobwebs sticking to my jumper. Mood setting was a key part of this gig. There was a makeshift projector setup, showing clips of what looked like early 20 th century rural Ireland, farmers driving horse and cart outside their thatched roof cottage type of scenery. RÓIS took to the stage wearing what I can only describe as a lace veil, almost completely covering her face, in my view an attempt to draw our focus to the performance rather herself. She performed her latest project, MO LÉAN, cover to cover, leading us through every track. The album explores life, death, and mourning through original work, reworked hymns, and songs. The Angelus was used as an interlude between a few songs, as it is on the album itself. I got instant flashbacks to 6pm on RTÉ One. Perhaps the most interesting element of the project and this performance was the use of ‘keening’. It harks back to a pre-Christian tradition when women would wail beside the coffin of the diseased, the type of sound that peers into your soul. It really felt like everyone in the crowd was taken aback by the vocals on show—the type of gig where you just shut up and listen. If you aren’t already aware of ROÍS, you should be. Genre-bending is the only way to describe her stuff. Go listen to her album. Kelly Moran - The Studio, National Concert Hall - Des Traynor U.S. composer and pianist Kelly Moran has played in Ireland three times within the last twelve months, and I have been in attendance at all three shows. A consummate artistic professional to her fingertips, this formidably talented woman of partIrish and part-Italian extraction has never failed to impress. Material performed this evening is drawn from her latest album, Moves In the Field, released in March of this year. On it, she duets with a Yamaha Disklavier, a programmable digital descendant of the Player Piano, which the Japanese company lent her during Lockdown. The effect is eerily beautiful, as mechanical precision meshes with human warmth, when she plays live over the treated recordings of herself stored on an iPad. In addition to her musical prowess, not least among Kelly’s admirable qualities is her consistent calling out of ‘My country currently committing a genocide’ for which she has garnered approval (especially here in Ireland), but has also encountered potentially career-damaging flak: ‘I don’t think I’ll be back in Germany in a hot minute anytime soon.’ After an impassioned plea of resistance, she encores with three pieces by Ryuichi Sakamoto, concluding with perennial crowd-pleaser, the main theme from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Bravo, on all fronts. Dark Blue: Anohni Sings Lou Reed - National Concert Hall - Des Traynor In response to Lou Reed’s death in 2013, ANOHNI posted on Facebook: ‘Lou was like a father to me. I have never felt so perceived and loved for who I actually am by a man than by Lou Reed. He fought tirelessly for me to have a place in the daylight culture. My career would never have taken off without Lou’s tremendous influence.’ Although not known primarily as a covers artist, on tonight’s showing ANOHNI proves a vivid interpreter of Reed’s songs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the ballads from Reed’s oeuvre which predominate (four cuts from the Velvets’ third, so-called ‘quiet’ album, no less), given the smoky standards torchy song treatment by her sumptuous, once-in-a-generation voice. Things kick off with a hesitant take on ‘Jesus’, but it is a tentative song. She soon lets go and shows what she’s really capable of on the extended outro to ‘Coney Island Baby’. Not that it’s all slow and sombre, with the ECT-mimicking sound tunnel on anti-psychiatry classic ‘Kill Your Sons’ proving a highlight for the sympathetic accompanying six-piece band. Sterling Morrison’s dreamy guitar lines from ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ are reproduced perfectly, and things reach an emotionally ecstatic climax with ‘Candy Says’, the first Reed song ANOHNI ever sang, concluding with her own memorial to her mentor and champion, ‘Sliver of Ice’. Master songwriter Lou had a reputation – to put it mildly – for not suffering fools. But if he liked you, he really liked you, and he favoured the true artists. ANHONI is one such, and she more than repays the compliment, and her debt, tonight. 29