Reviewed Today: Gary Louris and Mark Olson (The Jayhawks) in Whelan's and The Consequences of Lightningin Axis
Gary Louris and Mark Olson (The Jayhawks)
Whelan's, Dublin
If Neil Young is the godfather of grunge, The Jayhawks could be credited with a similar role in the development of alternative country music.
The band's seven albums set a standard for American roots rock - blazing a trail for bands such as Wilco and songwriters such as Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst. The Jayhawks play music reminiscent of The Beatles's Revolveror Dylan's Nashville Skyline- all fused with the spirit and wide open spaces of the American heartland.
From Minneapolis, the band has been acclaimed since their formation in 1985.
But those shimmering harmonies and Crowded House-style melodies failed to generate much in the way of record sales.
The Jayhawks disbanded a few years ago, resigned to their fate as one of those influential cult bands who flew below the radar.
This gig is the first of a European tour by Louris and Olson, the one-time mainstays of the band. It coincides with a new album, Ready for the Flood, produced by Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes.
Louris and Olson have had an on-off relationship for some years; Olson left The Jayhawks in 1996, leaving the main songwriting responsibilities to Louris. After various solo ventures enjoyed only limited success, the two have reconnected, in the hope of rediscovering that early Jayhawks magic.
A decent crowd - virtually all middle-aged males - turned out to see the band, but they were a dedicated crew loyal to the band for two decades and more. With just two acoustic guitars for company, Louris and Olson were self-effacing and gracious on stage. Louris greeted his Cork ancestors while Olson, the more showy of the pair, directed a dig or two towards Sarah Palin.
Together, their voices deliver some magical harmonies, reminiscent of Crosby and Nash back in the day, with Louris's high vocal blending magically with Olson's deeper well.
The new stripped-down material marks a shift back to the earlier Jayhawks albums. New songs Bicycleand Bloody Handshave those familiar lilting melodies; the best new track, Saturday Morning on Sunday Street, is full of wry observation. Surprisingly, there were relatively few of the old standards.
Blue, their most familiar song, is still a stand-out, while Waiting for the Sunis a reminder of these two at the peak of their powers.
There was what they used to call a warm karma in the air; the easy pleasure of listening to beautiful songs.
Just when they were about to fade into the sunset, Louris and Olson appear to have found a new sense of purpose. SEÁN FLYNN
The Consequences of Lightning
Axis, Dublin
The last instalment of Dermot Bolger's Ballymun Trilogy offers not so much a conclusion as a coda. That may be inevitable, for the simple reason that the story of Ballymun is unending.
And, having ambitiously dramatised the development and demolishing of the storied social housing project in From These Green Heights, then mirrored the experiences of its previous inhabitants and new immigrant communities on either side of that 40-year timeline with The Townlands of Brazil, Bolger here addresses the fitful, ongoing regeneration of the area.
Regeneration, as a theme, does not automatically guarantee new development though.
Centred on the death of Sam Thornton, the first tenant of the tower blocks, Bolger's play is essentially a commemoration: addressing the past, laying it to rest, then suggesting a future with quiet reflection and bruised optimism. A recap, in other words, of the story so far.
The character of Sam, played with a sad shuffle by Michael Byrne, is clearly a novelist's device; a person to embody a place.
A hard-working figure laid low by poverty and addiction, Sam's degradation was once so hopeless that he was written off and abandoned. Somehow he has struggled, with some support and no small amount of success, to reform himself.
His estranged son, Frank (Brendan Laird), a successful property developer, is drawn back to his father's deathbed, and Ballymun, under the suasion of a salty and sardonic Jesuit, Martin (Michael Judd), a slightly buckled pillar of the community.
There, he is fractiously reunited with Katie (Ann O'Neill), with whom he had a relationship as impulsive and brief as a lightning flash.
Its consequence, we assume, is Katie's daughter Annie, played with an engaging fierceness by Georgina McKevitt.
Then there is Jeepers (Stephen Kelly), a singer with some potential but battered self-confidence, something Annie gently attempts to correct with the encouraging mantra, "You sap."
If the previous plays in Bolger's series funnelled a surfeit of ideas into the scope of their single dramas, here we have the opposite problem: a relatively simple story stretched thin. Bolger's dialogue liberally deploys poetic turns of phrase and warm laughs as his characters delay revelations beyond all plausibility. But while Frank rues "the poverty of language", too often the exchanges are overwrought, their significance spelled out in semaphore.
Similarly, the economy of Ray Yeates's staging and Marie Tierney's sparing design allow for fluid transitions between spaces, but the overall sense is of something more static, with speeches delivered rooted to the spot, while the ghost of Sam hovers mutely in the background.
"There's always been two ways to look at Ballymun," imparts Martin, "an unmitigated disaster or the scene of thousands of daily unseen victories."
To its credit, the play eschews easy sentimentality for that scuffed sense of hope: the future of Ballymun, it says, must have accommodation for the past. There's no regeneration without reconciliation.
Runs until December 6th PETER CRAWLEY
