Pianist Hugh Tinney performance at the National Concert Hall and the NME Awards Tour's stop off at the Ambassador in Dublin are among the events reviewed by Irish Times critics
Hugh Tinney
The National Concert Hall
The first half of Hugh Tinney's programme in the NCH/The Irish Times Celebrity Series on Sunday straddled the centuries in an unusual way.
Busoni's pianistic re-casting of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D, BWV532, for organ, is the sort of piece you expect to encounter as an arresting romantic gesture to open a recital. Tinney presented it between a complete suite by François Couperin, the greatest French keyboard composer of the 18th century, and four movements from Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, a work written out of the composer's experiences of the first World War (each movement dedicated to a young man who lost his life in the conflict), and the even more distressing loss of his mother, to whom he was particularly devoted.
The second half was given over to Schubert's penultimate piano sonata, a piece that's conceived on the largest scale and that remains daunting both for the probing nature of its matter and the discursiveness of its manner.
The performances were as thoughtful as the programme itself, which extended its influence into the choice and sequence of encores - Scarlatti, Schubert and Gershwin. Tinney's native reserve brought to his playing a sense of aristocratic composure which only deserted him in the rhythmic slide of the opening movement of the Ravel, where he continually threatened to get ahead of himself.
For all its thoughtfulness, though, for all the delicacy of shading that was brought to bear, and for all the clearly-focused expression of which this performer is capable, the binding force he brings to music when he's at his best was not to be heard on Sunday night. Although there was much that was finely polished, there was an essential sensuality missing from the Ravel, the telling character of Couperin's miniatures was not captured, and the large spans of the Schubert were not successfully sustained.
It was in the pianistic blaze of Bach à la Busoni that performer and music seemed to find the most productive balance of the evening. Michael Dervan
The NME Awards Tour
Ambassador, Dublin
It used to be known as the Brats, since it began as NME's alternative to the mainstream Brit Awards; then it was the NME Carling Awards Tour. Now it's just plain old NME Awards, and once again it is steamrolling its way through the towns and villages of the UK and Ireland, trailing three hot new rock acts for local folks' delight and delectation. Past tours have featured superb bands like Coldplay, The Coral and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but also some forgettable acts like Tiger, Geneva and Campag Velocet.
This year's line-up is headed by New Zealand rockers The Datsuns - they may not outlast the current garage-band fad, but you can be sure they're going give socks onstage. The UK line-up includes Interpol and The Polyphonic Spree but, alas, the audience at Dublin's Ambassador had to make do with Boston band The Beatings. As your intrepid reviewer entered the building, The Beatings were thrashing seven shades of hell out of their guitars, and the crowd was already starting to swell.
Completing the line-up was Dublin band The Thrills, a laid-back five-piece effectively sandwiched between two raucous rawk machines. Undaunted by the sheer volume of their colleagues, the band strolled onstage to the strains of Michael Jackson's Thriller, then opened with Hollywood Kids, the lazy, harmonica- drenched rhythms evoking long afternoons lounging around the private swimming pool. Say It Ain't So was a jaunty country-rock tune, while Your Love Is Like Las Vegas and Big Sur pinned the Thrills' colours firmly in the map of the West Coast. Conor Deasy's cool contralto voice kept the songs balanced deftly on a telephone wire, while the guitar of Daniel Ryan cracks like twigs in the undergrowth.
Till The Tide Creeps In was the Thrills' answer to Surf's Up, while One Horse Town - the next single - made a suitably energetic gallop to the end. Order your advance copy of their album now.
In contrast to The Thrills' loose, collected sound, The Datsuns are a tight ball of explosive rock 'n' roll energy, like a bowling ball hitting a strike every time. A record-biz mate declared that they were ZZ/DC - a perfect description for their brand of retro metal boogie. Singer/bassist Dolf De Datsun howled like a dingo caught in a bear trap, while guitarists Phil and Christian Datsun gave a masterclass in riffology, lickosophy and powerchordiality. All four flailed their copious locks with reckless abandon, risking whiplash with every guitar solo. If Poison dressed down and played punk, this it probably what it would have looked and sounded like.
We got pretty much the whole shebang from their début album, including Sitting Pretty, Harmonic Generator, MF From Hell, Freeze Sucker, Lady and What Would I Know, plus the single, Super Gyration, and even a cover of a Cheap Trick song, Hello There. It was a big, not so clever, but a satisfyingly well-rounded bang on the ear. The best band named after a defunct car make - ever! Kevin Courtney
Vox 21
Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin
The first of this year's recitals in the Mostly Modern Series was dedicated to Raymond Deane as a celebration of his 50th birthday. The Bank of Ireland Arts Centre was packed, and the second half of the programme was devoted to three of his works, each written independently and with different instrumentation, but linked in the composer's imagination to the idea of death and perfomed on this occasion as a "Macabre Trilogy". The Marche Oubliée (piano trio) contains elements of a funeral march, distorted into a fiercely driven and challenging advance that affirmed life more than it denied it; Catacombs (piano trio and clarinet) is based on the section of that name in Mussorgsky's Pictures from an Exhibition and preserves its atmosphere of mystery while at the same subjecting the material to characteristically individual transformations. Seachanges (with Danse Macabre), for piano trio, flutes and percussion, could be said to move, in musical terms, across the Atlantic from Sligo to Mexico, the illusion being heightened by the increasing use of percussion until, at the end, all five players are shaking maracas in an unexpected coup de théâtre. The "trilogy" hangs together well, and what might have seemed eccentric in other hands, seemed here right and inevitable. The members of Vox 21 played with a controlled intensity that charmed the ear.
The works by Dwyer, Boulez, and Carroll were stimulating in their various ways; and as a surprise extra there was a polished and entertaining improvisation on two guitars by Benjamin Dwyer and Mike Nielsen.
Douglas Sealy
Neko Case
Whelans
Neko Case is apparently prone to throwing the occasional on-stage strop. Nashville's Grand Old Opry reputedly banned this feisty alt-country pin-up after an especially fractious performance.
Ironically, the quality most conspicuously lacking from her début Irish concert was passion.
Seattle-raised Case, who is promoting her well-received Blacklisted album, possesses a fantastic voice dash - a sky-scraping holler than chills the marrow as readily as it swells the heart.
Sadly her singing was not matched by the plodding accompaniment of a backing band; the members' thoughts seemed elsewhere.
Songs that on record exude an almost terrifying intensity too often sounded glum and turgid. Ghost Writing, a yearning dirge that recalled Peggy Lee, Kristin Hersh and Will "Bonny Prince Billy" Oldham in equal measure, limped when it might have soared, although the mediocre playing served only to underscore the power and reach of Case's spine-tingling rasp.
A swooning Pretty Girls fared better, with Case's crisp electric guitar occupying the foreground and Daryl White's rubbery dash - and frankly irritating - dash double bass banished to the margins. She followed with a ramshackle yet evocative cover of Bob Dylan's Buckets of Rain, her vocals slithering between throaty shriek and creepy whisper.
The title track from Blacklisted was offhand and poppy; bringing to mind Case's feted excursions with Canadian electro-pop revivalists the New Pornographers. When a heckler demanded a popular Pornographers single, Case joked that she would oblige as soon as she retrieved the huge synthesiser she had hidden up her skirt. It was a rare throwaway moment in a show largely devoid of spark. Sometimes faultless professionalism just isn't enough. Ed Power
