Irish Times critics review The Breeders at the Ambassador, Vonda Shepard at the Olympia and Cathal Coughlan at the Shelter.
THE BREEDERS, AMBASSADOR
Twin sisters Kim and Kelley Deal are still the nucleus of The Breeders, but their backbone is the trio of new guys, guitarist Richard Presley, bassist Mando Lopez and drummer Jose Medeles. The chemistry is apparent from the moment they hit the stage at Dublin's Ambassador: this is the new Breeders, and they're enjoying a new lease of life after a long and protracted hiatus.
Nearly 10 years after their début, Pod, Kim is still in love with rock 'n' roll, Kelley is off the smack, and the new album, Title TK, isn't half bad.
It's been a few years since the Deal sisters played Dublin, but the time slips away when they launch into their biggest hit, Cannonball. Suddenly, we're back in the land of post-grunge, and everything is all right with the world. Kim is shouting through a super-distorting microphone, Kelley is intoning the unforgettable chorus, and the crowd is jumping up and down like it's 1993 all over again.
The Cannonball doesn't strike right away, though: first, there's the excellent new single, Huffer, a more scattershot effort, to be sure, but right on target nonetheless. Then there are those other tunes from the new album, particularly Little Fury, Too Alive, and the quiet, six-minute epic, Off You. "You can go to the f***ing bar for this one," Kim instructs the crowd. They stay and listen.
If Kim Deal has learnt anything from her former band, The Pixies, it's that song structures are meant to be messed around with, and that it's OK to start a chorus in the middle of a verse, and to toss weird instrumental breaks in where they're least expected. And it's perfectly normal to halt the whole show while an extra drumkit is set up for Kim to perform The She.
"Anyone here watch too much TV?" she asks the crowd, all of whom are missing The Osbournes on MTV just to be here. It ends like a good, offbeat TV show, all too soon and with the studio audience roaring their approval without the need of an applause sign. A new episode worth waiting for.
Kevin Courtney
VONDA SHEPARD, THE OLYMPIA
So did you hear that Ally McBeal was cancelled? asks Vonda Shepard, with a toss of her telegenic tresses.
Her baby grand piano drips with red fairy lights and cup-candles. Given that David E. Kelly's quirky Dramedyä is the reason we're here tonight, the nonplussed response shared by audience and performer is little short of astounding.
But that's just the thing with Ally and Vonda: they're sweet, idiosyncratic and convey neither highs nor lows. "Bittersweet" has never seemed so appropriate.
Shepard's music is as provocative and edgy as a Starbucks latte. It's country without twang; blues, but not too sad; Gospel stripped of religion. Thank heavens for the record shop's Soundtrack section. The generic equivalent of white bread would be lost without it.
And yet there is something charmingly genuine about Vonda. Perhaps it's her dancing. While the camera never lies, it seems Ally's editors have been economical with the truth about Shepard's moves.
Her squatting waddle and sumo stomps are at first quite frightening, but then marvellously unselfconscious.
Speaking, she demonstrates the understandable awkwardness of a cameo character caught in the spotlight. "I love this theatre. It's so great. Wow," she airily intones. "And I love you," she adds as an afterthought.
After furtive attempts to play some material from her forthcoming album, Chinatown (its cover art presumably Flockhart-less), and some from her back-catalogue, Shepard shrugs that it's time to play songs from "Ally 1". There is a soft holler of appreciation. "You've probably been waiting for that, huh?" she says, with a heart-wrenching sweetness.
Under perfectly cosmetic lights, a smooth blend of organs, piano, slide guitar and gospel-backing vocals spell out Baby Don't You Break My Heart Slow and theme tune Searching My Soul on this quiet night out.
Peter Cawley
CATHAL COUGHLAN, THE SHELTER
Hyper-articulate, glumly didactic and musically ornate, Cathal Coughlan doesn't appear to be joking. He twists language in detached word-play, like a linguist. The audience, however, isn't so sure. The overriding tension in The Shelter was whether to laugh or weep.
"So nice to be here in the capital of the galaxy," announced Coughlan, "having come from the capital of the universe." The London-Irish answer to Camus by-way-of Kerouac began his existential beats with And Springtime followed Summer. Densely lyrical against lamenting nylon strings, concise cello lines and sparing percussion, at its conclusion someone whispers the word, "terrifying".
Musically, given a choice between the minor fall and the major lift, Coughlan takes the fall every time.
With usual vocal overstatement, Denial of the Right to Dream from forthcoming album The Sky's Awful Blue, was a minor epic about the totalitarian oppression of having a job. "Tune in, drop out for Friday night, come Monday love your convict's life," scolded Coughlan's contrapuntal polemic. The Grand Necropolitan Quartet chased complex rhythms, possibly to accommodate as many words as possible.
Payday, however, offered a mournful melody on a fittingly skeletal cello, while the tonal pivots and disenchanted melody of Black River Falls were unsettlingly affecting.
Our existential fall guy delivered a beat-poetry performance to atmospheric Mp3 snatches and seasick strings. Dark elliptical mutterings about colonists, civil war, madhouses and shopping centres were punctuated with the intoned mantra, "I will not go down that gravel path."
Elsewhere the wincing, frowning message of anti-consumerism seemed overly earnest - I don't buy it.
Peter Cawley
