While it is difficult to actively dislike the Four of Us - their sub-Crowded House jangle pop might verge on the irksome if it wasn't so anodyne - it's hard to find anything positive to say about them. At best, they inspire absolute indifference. Perennial mopers at the fringes of Irish rock consciousness, they are, like rain and traffic congestion, constantly, irrefutably there. Ignore them if you like - they won't go away.
Their sell-out show at Vicar Street - and it was a sell-out, with people literally hanging from the rafters - was a competent greatest hits set, where overly familiar crowd-pleasers - they have more of them than you would think - segued "difficult" songs during which frontman Brendan Murphy got to indulge in his tortured acoustic artist routine and lament the callowness of a world which, by and large, shrugs its shoulders at his band. It was all a bit cringe-inducing; frankly, we felt embarrassed for him. We were there for the drive-time radio hits; doesn't he realise that the rest is just so much padding?So it is their fans' collective myopia rather than any paucity of ambition which hobbles the Four of Us. Which is a pity. The band has made much of its alternative rock credentials; a claim to underground credibility rooted chiefly in their love of Talking Heads and their decision to self-publish their current album, Classified Personal. And, to be fair, beneath the trite lyrics (all earnest gestures and overwrought metaphors, enough to make even Bono shudder) and jaunty auto-pilot strumalongs there is a hint of something more dangerous. If only the context was different.
This, you see, was an easilyplacated crowd: given oldies like Mary, She Hits Me and a smattering of lovelorn ballads, they'd have had a few beers and gone home happy. Songs which just might transcend their oeuvre and actually mean something.