Chief

Academy 2, Dublin

A midweek evening in a city preparing to decamp to the major music festival of the year is not exactly an ideal time for a band to play. Maybe that’s what is wrong with Axl Rose over in the 02. In the basement Academy 2 venue, though, there are no such problems.

West coast rockers Chief are one of those up-and-coming acts that all the right blogs have been plugging, and this particular smoke isn’t without fire. The four- piece play polished Americana, well-crafted tracks built on solid, satisfying melodies.

Drums and bass carve out smooth country furrows with the odd pushy shuffle,and three-part vocal harmonies spill up and into the higher registers. It's a full- bodied sound, sparkling in places and deftly fitted together – it's a pleasure to hear it up close in a venue as compact as this, but there is a sneaking suspicion that a bigger room and rig would allow tracks such as the slick Night and Dayand the grooving Breaking Wallsto really take flight.

There is not much of startling originality at play here, but that is not the point. There’s a host of bands drawing on the best of the American music tradition and making good modern music – Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes – but Chief don’t sound like a bunch of musicians trying to ride a trend.

This is a group of people reared on Neil Young and The Band, with Townes Van Zandt rattling around in the background. Where they differ from their antecedents is that there is no flash virtuosity.

The interplay of the guitars over the rhythm section and the three interwoven vocal lines are beautiful to listen to. There is none of the red-hot flair though that Bobby Robertson, for example, used to blaze a trail with The Band.

This is Chief’s first show in Dublin. Here’s hoping they saddle the horses and roll into town again real soon.