The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and The breeders in today's reviews.
The Breeders
Vicar Street, Dublin
The Breeders will always be seen as one of the brightest stars in the constellation of early 90s rock bands - few pieces of music are as redolent of that era when MTV actually played music videos, sometimes even good music videos, as the first few seconds of their anthem Cannonball. In Kim Deal, they had the prototypical female rocker of the age; already famous from playing alongside Frank Black with The Pixies, her status as an icon to a certain music-loving demographic was secured when The Last Splashbrought them mainstream success in 1993.
One of the last times we saw Kim Deal on an Irish stage, she was playing through the waves of rain with the Pixies in Lansdowne Road in 2005. But where that set was a fiercely focused and triumphant blast from the past, this show never quite lived up to its potential. Kim Deal and her sister Kelley have more than just nostalgia to peddle - their just-released new album, Mountain Battles, is one of the best-reviewed of the year so far. But this show coincided with the day of the album's official release, and the sisters repeatedly and profusely apologised for playing their new, largely unfamiliar material and it was also the first set of their European tour.
Perhaps if this gig was a month or six weeks after the launch of the album, the band would have been less hesitant playing the new material and the audience would have been that bit more enthusiastic. As it was, the crowd remained as unresponsive as the band were apologetic.
Seeing Kim and Kelley Deal joke and bicker and endlessly tune up is charming, but there remained the unfulfilled expectation that the show would shift up through the gears, and leave behind the air of amusing rehearsal. Jose Medeles on drums and bassist Mando Lopez happily remained anonymous throughout most of the performance, and while the band are renowned for the brevity of their albums, it was frustrating to see them carry the trend through to their live show. Hopefully, by the time they play Electric Picnic they will have tightened up their performance.
DAVIN O'DWYER
Gala Concert at NCH, Dublin
The end of Michael Dervan's review of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's 60th anniversary concert was omitted from yesterday's editions. Here are the two final paragraphs of his review: This music (the final scene of Richard Strauss's Salome), now a little over a century old, has never lost its remarkable power to stir and shock, and Markson's studious approach leaves it free to do that which it does best.
The sheer massiveness of the orchestral sound was more than either Mark Tucker's Herodes or Deirdre Cooling-Nolan's Herodias could comfortably cope with. But Susan Bullock's Salome rode her besotted, perverse, exultant, musically shattering way over the Straussian extravagances, which Markson and his players delivered with often spine-tingling impact.
