The Plague Monkeys, the Dublin four-piece that has lately impressed with its feel for plaintive, blue-beat pop that skulks along in a lonesome gait, were when they emerged two or three years back typecast as Portishead wannabes, mere foot-soldiers in the downtempo revolution. Happily, they've since achieved enough of a stylistic advance to suggest their talents run a little deeper than those of most of their contemporaries.
On songs such as Exit and Some Bright Spark, greeted with a fond indulgence by a full house, it becomes clear a certain pragmatism has emerged - The Monkeys play to their strengths and chief among these is the vocal aplomb of singer Carol Keogh. Her delivery is steady and assured and her voice has plenty of bottom to it: it's a honeyed drawl that etches definition into the music's mood. The boys in the band seem suitably enthralled; they coddle the vocals with lazy guitar fills and let signeurial basslines slide around the melodic margins with a broody hint of menace. The percussion is good too, insinuating a little funk into the proceedings, while a nifty tapefeed offers a backdrop wash of sci-fi mystery.
All very tasteful and generally pleasant but this might be the type of material - icily moulded to the modern, urbanblues template - that requires a cool detachment in the rendering and I'm never convinced Irish acts do cool detachment all that well. In fact, The Plague Monkeys seemed most true to themselves when they allowed an emotive lyricism to sneak through.
This was the case on Crystal Palace and on the stand-out highlight, an as-yet-untitled song, debuted here, that saw Keogh cut loose some inner demons to fine, cathartic effect. I suspect this is the type of territory the band can most profitably explore.
