Bell X1
Vicar Street, Dublin
Bell X1 have been in this game for a decade. Four albums and a solid following means they can practically fill Vicar Street for a run of shows, and the band also has form in the US, where a string of TV appearances, including the Late Show with David Letterman, has no doubt built them a solid fanbase. Indeed, much of tonight's music would be perfect for emotional teenage television.
Here, the band are initially beset by sound problems, but they do themselves few favours. For five members, in places they produce a remarkably low level of noise and they seem to have an instrumental restlessness that leads to constant fidgeting with various effects and sounds. No sooner has Dave Geraghty built up an interesting piano line than he wanders off to find some shakers. Lead singer Paul Noonan kicks off the gig with a cowbell and frequently puts the guitar aside to tap pointlessly on some percussion sticks. It also seems odd that they are using samples when there are five members on stage who aren’t exactly flat out with work.
When the band concentrate on the riff at hand, the results are effective, on songs such as The Great Defectorand Flame.A guest appearance by Lisa Hannigan for Some Surprisegoes down a storm, and the crowd is in thrall for the majority of the gig (even though many only stop chattering like monkeys during songs to applaud like seals at the end).
After 10 years in the spotlight, Bell X1 should be seasoned pros, seeing the trends before they come around the corner, whipping out the hooks and riffs in a heartbeat, and holding a venue in the palm of their hand.
This is a band with decent players and a clutch of songs that fans are more than happy to sing along to. However, they still sound like they are in search of their own hallmark sound, and influences are all too easily identified. Not that this will stop them making a fortune in the US from the next series of One Tree Hillor the like.
LAURENCE MACKIN
NCC, IBO/Huggett
St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin
Bach – St John Passion
The impression created in this seasonal account of Bach’s St John Passion was of an attempt to treat the piece as something other than a choral work.
And indeed, choral movements are outnumbered by non-choral movements as Bach recounts and reflects upon the Good Friday narrative. And it’s in these non-choral movements that the special, historically aware qualities of Monica Huggett’s lively direction of her Irish Baroque Orchestra worked best. Period instruments, with their leaner, crisper sonorities, in fresh, animated tempos and full-blown unambiguous shaping achieved an aural journey back through time to an imagined 18th-century sound-world.
Among the special colours to enjoy were those of baroque oboes and wooden flutes, violas d’amore and da gamba, and the lute, all beautifully and sensitively played, above all as partners in the solo arias. Here Huggett mostly sat back and allowed singer and players to make chamber music together – sharply contrasting with the often unhelpful meddling of so many conductors in Bach’s sacred works.
Leading the cast was tenor John Elwes, who, as so often, brought an almost febrile quality of narrative engagement to the monumental role of the Evangelist. He was well complemented by the steady solemnity of Australian bass Dean Robinson as Christus. Scottish soprano Susan Hamilton brought a serene, musicianly clarity to her arias, above all to the sublimely despairing Zerfließe, mein Herze (“O melt, my heart”). The often problematic assignment of Pontius Pilate was here taken up with great gravitas by Jeffrey Ledwige from within the choir’s bass line.
He was one of just three basses among the scant 11 voices of the recession-cut National Chamber Choir – which was where this performance failed. Bottom line, the St John Passion is a choral work and not a suite of arias and recitatives.
No matter the authenticity of copying Bach’s possible use of only a dozen singers, no matter the evident quality of the NCC singers, a chorus of 11 (a 12th, a soprano, was missing) was not enough to create the dramatic intensity of the angry crowd, to hit listeners with the brutal consonants of kreuzige, kreuzige, to provide the audience with someone to identify with as the story unfolds.
MICHAEL DUNGAN
