The swoon of strings

REVIEW: The Middle East Sugar Club, Dublin:En route to the Jazz World stage at Glastonbury on Sunday, Australian band The Middle East made a fleeting visit to Dublin for a sold-out Sugar Club show.

Their sound is folky and country, delicate music built with layers of plucked strings, close-knit vocal harmonies flowing in the high registers and the odd unusual dash of horns or glockenspiel.

Here, they construct the songs purposefully, lifting a room gently with swathes of melody over straightforward chord structures, while the drummer flirts around the edges, threatening to build a beat and crack the tracks open. When he eventually locks it down, there is not the expected release, but the voluminous cavalcade continues on its solitary way.

When The Middle East are good, they are ever so slightly majestic, bringing the crowd down blissful stretches of gorgeous, lonely country roads, while anticipating the next musical turn that may or may not happen. A fine version of Bloodis perhaps the evening's highlight, though when the band bring support act Halves on stage, and more than a dozen people crowd around for a full-on hoe down, the music is irresistible.

The band wear their hearts on their sleeves: the influence of fellow Australians Dirty Three hangs around one track, another has Ryan Adams as a big brother, while Townes Van Zandt’s fingerprints are all over some pieces. Sometimes it seems as if the chord structures don’t need to be explored for perhaps this long, and the rhythm section lacks the dynamism and subtlety that comes with top calibre country music.

The vocals are the leading lights here, and when the three are executed well, they flow in with all the drama and high-end gravity of a swoon of strings.

There are moments of subtle magic in a fine set that is sure to have gone down a gentle storm in Somerset.