Dervish
NCH, Dublin
★★★★☆
Cathy Jordan takes possession of the National Concert Hall from the opening chords of The May Morning Dew. Her charisma has always been the glue that binds Dervish, tracing the filigree elements of each band member’s fine musicianship and ensuring they shine.
The Great Irish Songbook, their 2019 album, anchors this performance, with Jordan’s soaring voice reaching effortlessly into the furthest corners of the auditorium on Thursday night.
Amplifying the Irish song tradition is a welcome pitstop on Dervish’s long and winding career path, and one that chimes readily with Jordan’s parallel Crankie Island Project, for which the vintage illuminated storytelling device melds visuals with lyrics to colour the picaresque tales she revels in telling through her songs.
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Liam “Toots” Kelly’s flute, low whistle and tin whistle occupy a central space in Dervish’s sound; Tom Morrow’s fiddle then weaves complex patterns in and around their sinuous lines, the pair in concert with one another’s every move.
Brian McDonagh’s mandola insinuates itself with characteristic modesty, grounding Dervish’s sound and playing off Jordan’s considerable percussive strengths on bodhrán and bones. Tony Byrne, their guest guitarist, adds further to the percussive drive.
Initially Shane Mitchell’s accordion struggles in the sound mix, but gradually it finds the acoustic space it deserves, particularly as the band wend through their New Found Out tune set. His intricate mastery of the box adds further rhythm and poise, propelling the music skywards with greater intensity as the evening progresses.
This gala performance is a celebration of so much of who Dervish are and what they do. Their special guests Moya Brennan, John Spillane, Damien Dempsey and Indigo Girls (sharing vocals with Jordan on Passage West, the recent single that Spillane wrote for Dervish) brings additional layers of complexity to the mix and renders anew songs such as WB Yeats’s The Sally Gardens, The Rambling Irishman and The Galway Shawl.
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But it is Dervish’s ability to marry the old and the new that brings absolute definition to the evening. From Moya Brennan’s delicate and buoyant Tobar an tSaoil (which she wrote with her daughter, Aisling) to Spillane’s Johnny Don’t Go to Ballincollig, with its sean-nós lineage shining through like never before, and Dempsey’s distinctive take on Shane MacGowan’s Rainy Night in Soho, lines are traced and connections forged that make sense of our expansive song tradition.
Jordan and Dempsey’s reading of Kitty, a song learned from The Pogues, is a lesson in pinprick delicacy, rendering the vastness of the concert hall an intimate setting where every note and vocal curlicue can be savoured.
Graham Henderson, on keyboards, brings further riches to Jordan’s song choices, particularly to Kitty, a traditional song that MacGowan unearthed for Red Roses for Me, The Pogues’ 1984 album.
Dervish look backward and forward with ease, breathing exceptional life into old standards, buoyed by Jordan’s fine vocal technique and her magnetism. The evening is a glorious celebration of a tradition that’s in deliriously rude health.
