Irish Times critics review Deff Leppard at the Ambassador, Dublin, Kurt Nikkanen and Virginia Kerr at the NCH, Dublin, Feeder at the Ambassador, Dublin, Lynda Lee, Alison Browner, Robin Tritschler & John Milne at St Ann's Church, Dublin and Brendan Earley: Schemata at the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork.
Def Leppard Ambassador, Dublin
The 1980s, though a great time for those who claim to remember them with any clarity, made one unforgivable rock faux pas. It was a no-brainer in the 1970s: guitar players in the formative decade of rock - the first decade to do it without the roll - knew the value of a good pair of flares when they bestrode the stage with axes in hand. But the 1980s saw the narrowing of the rock trouser to the point at which guitarists striking a spread-eagled pose could damage your eyesight.
So we come to Def Leppard, a band guilty of instigating some of the worst excesses of rock music over the decades. Now they're back in flares and, with titles such as Now, the name of their first single from their latest album, X, it might seem a rebranding is under way, as if they're distancing themselves from their well-worn musical formula.
Fear not. The Def Leppard that took to the stage were the same old rockers they've always been. Their booming, multi-vocal rock style has served them well for many years, and it was refreshing to see them showing no signs of ditching it in favour of something more "contemporary". From the 20-year-old Rock Of Ages (which now seems prescient) to their last album, Joe Elliot and company delivered a seamless, faultless, very loud, grin-inducing two-hour show that drew from the entire span of their career, none of it sounding the least bit cheesy or out of place.
Rather than showing themselves to be an anachronism, the energy, music, show business and refreshing lack of irony that bristled through the gig demonstrated how self-absorbed, second-hand and transitory much of the contemporary scene is. Def Leppard have stayed the course, and now it seems the scene is coming back round. Instead of an exercise in nostalgia, they unleashed a rejuvenated waft of energy that hummed and then filled the room and was all about now.
X marks the spot.
John Lane
Kurt Nikkanen & Virginia Kerr NCH, Dublin
The tune America, best known here as that of the UK national anthem, provided the subject for some rumbustious and colourful variations for organ written by Charles Ives when he was only 17.
In their subsequent orchestration by William Schuman they lost none of their iconoclastic verve, for the composer of the New England Triptych (1956), which was based on hymn tunes by William Billings (1744-1800), was obviously a gifted arranger who could combine brashness and beauty.
These two works were brought to startling life by the conductor William Eddins, who conjured from the National Symphony Orchestra an unaccustomed brilliance of tone and rhythmic exactitude that one would have stood in the snow to hear.
His style of conducting, in which not just the arms but the whole body is eloquent, made the minimalism of John Adams's Violin Concerto metamorphose into a work where the repetition became urgent and exciting.
The soloist in this first Irish performance was Kurt Nikkanen, who negotiated the extremely demanding part with astonishing virtuosity.
Barber's Knoxville is a sort of secular cantata, celebrating an American urban childhood.
Eddins showed himself skilful in guiding its warm lyric flow, which owes more to European romanticism than any American tradition, and in supporting soprano Virginia Kerr in her long solo part.
After that, Ellington's Harlem was an explosion of jazz, with wailing saxophones and wild drumming.
Eddins almost danced his way through, so close was his identification with the music.
Douglas Sealy
Feeder Ambassador, Dublin
Back on the road after the death of drummer Jon Lee, Feeder are defiantly full of life and playing as if it's their last time round. Lee committed suicide in his Miami home last year, but rather than give up the ghost the Welsh band picked themselves up and released their superb new album, Comfort In Sound. Now they're back onstage, back in the bosom of their fans, and there's comfort and joy all round.
Lee's replacement is former Skunk Anansie drummer Dave Richardson; with additional guitarist Dean Tidey making up a foursome with original members Grant Nicholas and Taka Hirose, Feeder dished out some of their tastier tunes, including Seven Days In The Sun, Come Back Around and We Can't Rewind. Given the taut exuberance of the songs, they could be the Welsh Foo Fighters, but the music catapults between styles of rock without getting embedded in any. Buck Rogers is the best US teen anthem by a non-US band, and Just The Way I'm Feeling would be a fine ballad in any genre - it's just lucky that it's done with a vibrant, emo-core passion.
Ditto Forget About Tomorrow, with its orchestral sweep (on tape, alas; the band couldn't fit an orchestra into the tour bus) and thundering sentiment reminiscent of Smashing Pumpkins at their best.
With ideas borrowed from Britpop and US grunge, Feeder could be accused of being musical parasites, feeding off rock's finest glories; even their current logo evokes In Utero-period Nirvana, but the boyos get away with it because no matter where they look for inspiration, they never take their eye off the song. And, as the crowd reaction testifies, they haven't forgotten how to rock the crowd, either.
Kevin Courtney
Lynda Lee, Alison Browner, Robin Tritschler & John Milne
St Ann's Church, Dublin
The fourth concert in this Bach cantata series presented three consolatory works best summed up in the blessing pronounced by the bass in No 67, Friede sei bei euch, or Peace be with you. This was sung with power and dignity by John Milne, both punctuating and underlying the restless trio of soprano Lee, contralto Browner and tenor Tritschler. Nos 104 and 112 develop the theme of peace in the person of the Good Shepherd, 112 being a close paraphrase of the 23rd psalm, The Lord Is My Shepherd, and far less of a textual patchwork than many of the cantatas. In 104, the bass sings about the "blessed flock, the sheep of Jesus", and in 112 he has the moving verse about the valley of the shadow of death.
No 112 is the most cogent of this selection and the contralto aria in which Browner shares the honours with David Agnew (oboe) as she sings of the pure and refreshing water leads naturally into the bass telling of the rod and staff that will comfort, and on into soprano and tenor rejoicing, in a lively duet, that the Lord is preparing a table for the believers.
Douglas Sealy
Brendan Earley: Schemata Triskel Arts Centre, Cork
The cross-pollination between science and art has currency for many contemporary artists. Of course the contiguous overlapping between the two realms is not a new thing: Leonardo da Vinci and, more recently, the Fluxus group are just two of the more obvious examples.
Brendan Earley's work rests quite neatly between the two practices; in part he shows diagrammatic drawings, in part he uses electrical and optics equipment.
For the latter he demonstrates an obvious mechanical and electrical know-how, which is appropriate considering that his subject matter investigates the now ubiquitous presence of CCTV cameras in our urban environment.
The diagrammatic drawings in themselves are quite interesting, rendered using pen and marker to starkly represent the cameras and their immediate environs. The pristine architectural clarity of the work, which utilises fine line detail as well as rapid sweeps of the pen to create tonal fills, is heightened even further as each one is laminated.
The other main part of the show involves the ingenious manipulation of humble materials such as cardboard tubing and styrofoam packaging, rigged to an improvised projection system.
The film sequence running through the projector comes full circle as it shows a mini "city" made from styrofoam and filmed using night-vision camera, which relates back again to the CCTV cameras.
By extension, one expected some form of monitoring within the space itself, and I found myself sheepishly looking for a hidden camera. Well, if it was hidden I was never going to find it anyway. Big Brother is watching.
Runs until February 27th
Mark Ewart
