Irish Times writers give their verdicts
The Necks, Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin
It's virtually taboo to criticise improvisational music in certain circles. If you do, you're viewed as something of a lesser being, as below a certain level of intelligence, an anti-elitist even. Improv, of itself, is a brilliant concept - the inquiring minds of musicians are given free reign to do what they will. Culture as interaction, provocation and consciousness expansion? The man from Del Monte says yes. The practicalities are somewhat different, of course, and open to question. And doubt.
Australia's The Necks come garlanded with the kind of praise afforded cult and vaguely avant-garde/free jazz/ambient/ minimalist acts. Something of an open secret in their native country, where their 11 albums have sold in thousands, the trio - Chris Abrahams (piano), Tony Buck (drums) and Lloyd Swanton (bass) - is trumpeted as entirely new and entirely now. The Necks, of course, are nothing of the sort - their atonal music is as old as improv itself. Their studious, meditative approach, meanwhile, borders on the coldly absurd.
At Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, they performed two wholly improvisational pieces, each roughly 45 minutes in length. Prior to each piece, the trio appeared to psych themselves into a state of readiness for what might or might not happen. And then it started: strands of instrumentation running parallel, occasionally converging in subtle shifts but rarely troubling each other for the time of day. Drum cymbals were scratched, piano keys stroked, bass strings thumbed. It went on like this for the duration, building in intensity, lapsing into a sequence of calm and furious phases. Most of the audience were quite attentive; a few stifled yawns, while at least two people behind me stifled giggles.
The gigglers had a point, and it's a good one: while free improvisation rightly requires that the listener at least acknowledges all the possibilities of modern music cold-shouldered by a cynical, product-based industry, surely there should be a sense of inclusiveness, warmth, wit and humour about it?
The fundamental philosophy behind free improv goes like this: the first take is the deepest. You can't step into the same river twice because the water changes; everything changes; the first time is unique, and if one tries to imitate that first time, what follows becomes instantly redundant.
Why that unique first take is also as dry as a desert is something worth asking. On this showing, The Necks certainly don't have the answer.
Tony Clayton-Lea
Mark Lanegan, Ambassador, Dublin
He hangs on tight to the microphone stand, a black silhouette on the Ambassador stage, and emits the kind of feral growl that makes you wonder if he's human, or some shadowy creature of the night. Mark Lanegan is, of course, the latter, a man who has walked down life's darkest alleyways, and probably scared off some of the other denizens. His band, The Screaming Trees, were contemporaries of Nirvana, and it's a wonder that Lanegan didn't follow Kurt Cobain into the other world. Or maybe he did, and that's his undead aura standing menacingly on the stage.
Singing with Queens Of The Stone Age has been a kind of rehab for Lanegan, but he's continued to record his own solo albums. His newest, Bubblegum, is his best, featuring such fine, frazzled blues-rock tunes as Hit The City, Metamphetamine Blues, Sideways In Reverse and When Your Number Isn't Up. QOTSA's Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri collaborate on the album, as do P.J. Harvey and Velvet Revolver's Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan.
Looking for familiar faces in the darkness of the stage, you can just make out the elongated beard and bald pate of Oliveri on bass. He's also Lanegan's support act on tour, playing a short acoustic set, but word from the early-comers is that he's better off keeping the day job. However, given rumours that both Oliveri and Lanegan have left Queens Of The Stone Age, it looks as though the biker-like bassist is in rock-'n'-roll limbo.
Lanegan seems assured and composed on stage, although it's hard to guess his expression, since, for the entire gig, not a single spotlight even brushes past his face. The slight-looking girl to Lanegan's right is not Polly Jean, but she provides a suitably rootsy vocal backing. The feel of a desert session is amplified by a band that jams out like Crazy Horse crossed with Mercury Rev.
Lanegan has a plentiful back-catalogue to pull from, what with his numerous solo albums, his QOTSA collaborations and his Screaming Trees classics; so there's understandable disappointment when he says "see ya" after just 50 minutes on stage. Perhaps he was worried that if he tarried too long, the spotlight might eventually catch him and turn him to desert dust.
Kevin Courtney
