Jubilee Year

THE Jubilee Allstars do not rock - no, not in the slightest. They're the sort of band who would probably report such "rock" activity to the authorities as being a breach of the peace. What they do is something very slow, introspective, moody, lo-fi, countryish and pretty darn good. Evoking as they do the sort of musical spirit that seeps languidly through the work of Alex Chilton, they're the best possible antidote to the big guitar, lousy lyric sound that threatens to bludgeon people into submission.

Originally on the Dead Elvis label, now with the Sony offshoot, Lakota, the band who used to be known simply as Jubilee, added the Allstars for a variety of boring legal reasons and impressed many with their first Lakota EP, the truly wonderful By The End Of The Night - which received a Melody Maker single of the week accolade.

With a new EP in the shops, titled Which Kind, we frog-marched bass player and singer Fergus McCormack into a small room, shone a very strong light into his eyes and accused him of being a propagator of wilfully lo-fi, country-tinged, melancholy music. He `fessed up soon enough: "We definitely have country references in our sound, but we're not really a country band in that respect. The lo-fi thing is a bit strange. I think we get called that because we're not very good at playing. We also get a lot of Stars of Heavens-type comparisons, if that's any help." Yes or no on that one? "It's sort of embarrassing because I idolised The Stars of Heaven. I suppose for many people writing about us, it's a sort of vindication, because The Stars were one of the few bands doing anything of worth back in the U2-dominated sound of Irish music in the 1980s."

How do you answer to the charge of shoe-gazing? "That's one I can't understand at all. I remember when we did the John Peel session, the sound engineer turned to us at one stage and said "have you got any songs a little less introspective?" and we didn't. We can't help it, that's the way we write. Our music may be a bit dour at times, but we're not like The Red House Painters or anything. Some people come up to us and say we remind them of The Violent Femmes, a band none of us have has ever heard, or else mention the 4AD bands. The reality is, most of our influences are American, particularly bands like The Replacments and Big Star with Gram Parsons thrown in to " Ever worry about becoming a band for musos? "Yes."

For a band who regard recording on an eight-track as tantamount to over-production and who say they won't be doing many gigs in the near future because "we've done two recently", there's a feeling within the industry that they won't be bothering Bryan Adams on the stadium front this year. The real danger, though, lies in Jubilee becoming that most dreaded and sanctimoniously worthy of entities - a critics' band. "That's the way it's looking at the moment," says Fergus, "and it's not something we can do anything about. But we don't want to be like our heroes and have all the press like us but not sell any records."

The Which Kind EP is currently available on lovely seven-inch vinyl (which plays at 33 r.p.m., but even if you play it at 45 r.p.m. you still won't have any problem keeping up) and also on less lovely Compact Disc.

AT the other end of the spectrum, Creation hopefuls Three Colours Red, one of the better bands on the Brats tour, come back to play Whelans, Dublin on Saturday night ... On quite the other hand, retro no-hopers Reef are at the Red Box tonight, but the real gig at the venue happens tomorrow night when DJ extraordinaire Carl Cox gets down to business (doors 11.p.m.)... By far and away the best new Irish stuff around at the moment is the debut EP by Roscommon band The Marbles. Glam pop a go-go is the order of the day from these excessively talented little urchins. They play The Abbey Inn, Tralee tonight before going off to do something in Paris, after which they'll be at the Virgin Megastore, Dublin on March 20th and Eamon Doran's on March 21st... More Free Stuff: we've got 10 pairs of tickets for Divine Comedy on the 16th of this month, 10 pairs of tickets for The Orb on the 17th, and 10 pairs for Suzanne Vega (who asked her to come out of retirement?) on the 27th. All gigs at The Olympia. Just write to the usual address saying "Can I please have some free tickets?" for the artist of your choice; and get them in as soon as possible. Thanks ... Next week: The awesome Mr Nick Cave.