The Goo 1
Reviews SIMPLE KID - WHELANS Live Reviews ANDREW
LAMBERT MHAOL Workman's Club On a stormy Saturday night in Dublin city centre, Mhaol brought the vibes to Workman's main room with singular style. The evening got underway with a rally cry from TENI for trans support for Irish youths before the five piece took to the stage to blast out the fiery feminist punk that made Attachment Styles ADHAMH O’CAOIMH SIMPLE KID Whelans A welcome return to Whelans for all three acts performing last April 7th, the ever astonishing Naoise Roo opened the night delivering an ethereal set of barebones beauty. The deepest performance of the evening, and a homecoming set of sorts for the erstwhile songstress, her first Irish performance in a year. Les SalAmandas gorgeous Americana tinged folk continued DESMOND TRAYNOR JOE CHESTER Lucia The multi-talented Joe Chester returns to the Axis, Ballymun with his Lucia show, which premiered there last year as part of the annual Joycean Bloomsday celebrations. Lucia Joyce was the daughter of James and Nora Barnacle, a promising dancer and illustrator who succumbed to severe mental illness, fell among shrinks, and spent the last fifty of her seventy-five years on earth incarcerated in various asylums. To add insult to indignity, her nephew and JJ’s grandson, PAGE 14 Stephen Joyce, destroyed all her correspondence, fiction, and poetry, effectively silencing her and writing her out of family history. Chester’s suite of eleven instrumental pieces, performed on classical guitar (he taught himself nylon string fingerstyle technique during lockdown) with string quartet The Sound of Bells, is an attempt to give Lucia back her voice. To this end, Chester foreswore all lyrical content, lest it became too prescriptive. As always with songs without words, one can wonder how exactly the music relates to the stated themes, but the visual backdrops reinforce the idea that these compositions capture significant moments from Lucia’s life. Although much of Lucia’s psychic agony is blamed on the disorderly and insecure homelife necessitated by her father’s vocation, ironically he was her greatest champion, refusing to accept her diagnosis of schizophrenia, and instead sending her for analysis with Carl Jung, which lasted for four years. Was Ulysses worth Lucia’s wasted life (or her brother Georgio’s alcoholism) goes the old moral dilemma? Prior to Chester’s act of resuscitation, I would have said ‘Yes’. After witnessing it in concert, now I’m not so sure. proceedings, their beautiful, plainspoken songs made up of a charming twin vocal interweaving over thoughtful guitar work, on the heels of their debut record from February. Simple Kid and his first visit to the Whelans stage in some 15 years was met with a fervent and sold out response, literally packed to the rafters. An amusing technical fault left the backing tracks projected across the stage for a time, which was sort of fitting for a guy who put his beloved, early material together in such a haphazard manner, but we still saw delivered a wonderful set of Beckian songs that I somehow kind of half knew, with an overdriven acoustic guitar sound that felt by turns unstable and fantastic, and a perfect accompaniment to the delightfully lo-fi backing. ‘Staring at the Sun’, ‘Serotonin’ and ‘Drugs’ were predictably received to rapturous applause, but his later material, thoughtful pieces like ‘Robot Lion & Grey Ghost’ hit just as profoundly. one of the most immediate and thrilling debuts of the year when it arrived in February. Crowd favourites 'Therapy', 'Femme' and 'Gender Studies' sound harder and heavier in person, mainly thanks to the pulsating bass of Zoe Greenway and the enigmatic stage presence of Roisin Nic Ghearailt. The Mhaol frontwoman is bursting with energy all night, regaling the audience with tales of nights filled with crappy lads in Workmans long ago (to which 'No One Ever Talks To Us' is suitably dedicated) before shouting out her sex positive mother after a raunchy performance of 'Period Sex'. It's a short yet sweet set that wastes no moments and leaves the Workman's crowd a sweaty mess in the best possible sense, with this ferocious homecoming confirming Mhaol to be just as commanding and captivating on stage as on record.