Irish Timeswriters review a selection of events.
Eels
Vicar Street Dublin
Mark Oliver Everett does disguise, (as well as dissonance and depression) like nobody else. This year's model is a jumpsuited, baseball capped, affable type, about as far removed from his previous besuited and umbrella-toting incarnation as chalk is from cheese. With his newly published autobiography and a documentary chronicling his complex relationship with his physicist father (a peculiar and eccentric personality, a devout atheist, and a fittingly unconventional father of the man who calls himself E), Everett Junior is in expansive mood, a different animal to the one who has captured our beating hearts with the anaesthetised alienation of Beautiful Freak, the funky curveballs of Electroshock Bluesand the reverberating devastation of Daisies of the Galaxy.
Opening with an hour long BBC documentary on E's quest to get beneath the skin of his dead father, (a "rock star of the physics world") who was responsible for fashioning a theory of parallel universes, this latest incarnation of Mark Everett (aka Eels) reached out and connected with his audience in a way he has never done before.
After that little getting- to-know-you cinematic interlude, E launched headlong into a retrospective showcase that reached from Novocaine for the Souland My Beloved Monsterto Jean nie's Diary, I Like Birdsand a spectacular version of Flyswatter, complete with E taking the time to swap piano and drumkit with his sole accompanist, the exceedingly talented multi-instrumentalist known as The Chet. It's a Motherfuckerwas as searingly to the point as ever, piano and naked vocals summing up the state of grief better than any academic tome, and during his second encore, I'm Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heartwas the perfect snapshot of a musician whose spin on life is so wonderfully askew that psychiatrists should be doling it out in daily spoonfuls.
E's world is laden with David Lynch-like references to suburban alienation and not-so-quiet desperation. This St Patrick's night manifestation was about as good as he's got for a long time - yet this is a musician who has never been less than spellbinding live. The edges are less jagged, the humour's edgier and the lyrics are ever more revealing of a personal journey that most of us take in one form or another during the time when life happens.
For a man who professes an intimate acquaintance with death and personal annihilation, Eels' music is curiously, undeniably life-affirming. - Siobhán Long
The Intruder
Smock Alley, Dublin
It is late at night and somewhere in the darkness that enshrouds an isolated family home, lurks an unseen presence. "I think someone has come into the garden", a young woman tells her grandfather, ominously, but there is nobody there. Later, doors are opened and refuse to be closed, mysterious footsteps are heard creaking on the staircase and a scythe is periodically sharpened with an unearthly shriek.
This short play from 1890 by the Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck clearly has all the necessary elements of a decent horror story, but the slow creeping unease of The Intruderhas infinitely more symbolic intent. For those who like their symbolism unambiguous, these are spelled out as clearly and as early as possible.
"When once illness has come into the house," announces The Uncle, "it is as though a stranger had forced himself into the family circle."
Like almost every utterance in Company D's production, these words are deliberately strained, delivered here by Michael Hough with heavy, twisted portent but denuded of any natural intonation. It is part of director David Scott's experiment, not wholly successful, in which the starkness of Maeterlinck's words meets a stylised, staggered performance style.
Coupling the symbolist drive of Maeterlinck, who distrusted the expressive capabilities of actors and their ability to service loftier ideas, with the physical emphasis and proto-absurd theories of Antonin Artaud, Scott's stage picture presents to us slumped and static figures, their hands locked in rigor mortis grips, their eyes directed everywhere but at each other. This might seem to subjugate the actors to the text, but though the performers commit to the style utterly, their cumbersome plodding movements draw attention to the actors, distancing us from the meaning of their words.
The play is strange enough already.
Little can impede the action of the play, though, for there is so little of it. As illness stalks a recuperating mother offstage, her three daughters, their father, uncle and blind grandfather wade through metaphors for man's plight - blindness, darkness, servitude - and wait impatiently for visitors who never arrive. There is a teasing foreshadowing of Beckett in their meaningful attendance on this austere stage. And though Maeterlinck shares none of Beckett's grim comedy, he carries a similar existential chill when that unwanted visitor, the intruder, finally makes his presence felt. - Peter Crawley
• Until Mar 29
Craig Walker
Eamonn Doran's Dublin
Power of Dreams were the nearly men of the early 1990s. Signed to a major label, with widespread critical acclaim for their albums and support slots to the likes of The Pixies and The Wedding Present, the four-piece were also caught up in label collapses and changeovers.
After the Clondalkin band disbanded in 1995 frontman Craig Walker formed another group, Pharmacy, before working with London electronica artists Archive. More recently he has worked on several film soundtracks for French cinema.
Back in his home town this week, the set made it clear that Walker is more about looking to the future than to his past these days. For a first gig with a new band Walker could have been excused for suffering from a few nerves; instead vocal problems, or the loss of his "talking voice" as his keyboard player offered, affected certain songs throughout the set as he struggled to reach upper register notes.
The material being showcased was a lot beefier and heavier than the indie-pop Walker was writing in his late teens. Influences that the songwriter readily admits to, including Oasis, Nirvana and The Clash, were evident in some of the tunes while a song such as Summertimedisplayed Walker's knack for a cracking tune and smart lyrics.
The encouraging audience greeted the few Power of Dreamstracks with nostalgic ardour. The intro to 100 Ways to Kill a Lovestill sounded as perfect as ever and remains an Irish indie classic. Stay, also from 1990s Immigrants, Emigrants and Me(an album that should have been part of The Ticket's Top 40 Irish Albums list according to many On The Record blog comments) proved to be another highlight of the set.
Eamonn Doran's is the ideal intimate venue to test out new material and a forgiving one too for a singer with voice trouble. For Walker, forthcoming dates in Greece will provide more time and space to shape the new songs as he moves beyond the legacy of an Irish band that were a cut above the rest. - Brian Keane
