Pugwash/Whelan's, Dublin:WHEN A band is introduced on to the stage by a cast member from Little Britain (Paul Putner), you begin to wonder if they might know the right people. At the launch gig for the band's new album, Eleven Modern Antiquities, those suspicions were confirmed as Dublin songwriter Thomas Walsh and his fellow Pugwash members were joined by a selection of special guests.
Trying to describe the music of Pugwash, either on record or live, without mentioning The Beatles, Beach Boys or Electric Light Orchestra is impossible, not that this bothers Walsh (just check out his website for a selection of gushing essays about some of the aforementioned). As an ardent admirer of many of the finest pop songwriters who have ever lived, Walsh has also been a keen student.
As demonstrated with older songs, such as This Could Be Good and Apples, he knows how a key change can take a song where we least expect it, or how a shift in rhythm will deceive our tapping feet.
Neil Hannon (or "the My Little Pony guy", as Walsh quipped) was guest keyboard player for the evening and his fingerprints were all over the sparkling Cluster Bomb, while Nelson Bragg (of The Brian Wilson Band) provided percussion support to Johnny Boyle's drumming. Finer Things in Life (the first Pugwash single) stood freshly alongside recent radio favourite Take Me Away, with the self-deprecating frontman and his long-time collaborator, Keith Farrell, pitch-perfect in their harmonies.
The familiarity of the Pugwash sound is the band's greatest strength and also its weakness. On home turf Walsh is rightly celebrated as a songwriter of some merit, but whether his melodic power-pop will cut the mustard in bigger and more competitive markets remains to be seen.
That, however, was irrelevant for this show. The audience could not help but be captivated by Walsh's awestruck delight as XTC's Dave Gregory joined the band for an encore which included the stunning ballad, Here, and a group singalong on the sun-soaked Nice to be Nice.
Despite the international array of guests, the set closed with Lansdowne Valley, a gorgeous ode to a childhood in Drimnagh. This was a warm-hearted celebration and the start of another chapter in the Pugwash story."Familiarity is the band's greatest strength and weakness. Whether melodic power-pop will cut the mustard in bigger markets remains to be seen
