Review

Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events

Richmond Fontaine

The Sugar Club, Dublin

Richmond Fontaine's frontman Will Vlautin writes evocative songs about lonesome losers and exasperated, down-on-their-luck blue collar workers. It is a world populated by stressed out hospital workers, abused partners and reckless gamblers. His cinematic songs transport you back to movies like Paris, Texasor the novels of John Steinbeck.

Vlautin is an accomplished novelist, with two novels published by Faber and Faber. Many of his songs are like short novellas, as ordinary folk try to hold it together. They are set against haunting, melancholic music, often driven by pedal steel guitar. The mystery, of course, is why Richmond Fontaine – formed in 1994 – has taken so long to build a following.

There is a real buzz about the latest album, We Used to Think The Freeway Sounded Like a Rover, which was reflected in a hugely enthusiastic audience for this sold-out gig. While the songs may occupy a sad universe, there is no disguising the joy of the four-piece as the crowd sings along. There is the happy sense of a band that has paid its dues and deserves the recognition.

The new album is the seventh from the Oregon band. It is arguably their strongest; it is certainly the most accessible. Suddenly, Richmond Fontaine is the band of choice for the Uncutgeneration. If you like Gram Parsons, Calexico or Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, you'll love Richmond Fontaine.

On stage, it’s not difficult to see what all the fuss is about. There’s a real energy to the band’s hard-edged, assertive performance; this is a band that has been playing together for 15 years, and it shows.

The Pull, a song about a washed-up boxer drifting across the west coast, is a real highlight. The title song from the new album is also delivered with relish.

Some minor quibbles. Sometimes it felt as though the band’s stripped back songs sound better on the album than live, where all sorts of bar room noises intrude.

Paul Brainard's mariachi trumpet on The Boyfriend– so haunting on the album – was also strangely absent. And that glorious pedal steel was left in the recording studio.

But there was much to admire and enjoy. The five-song encore included a blistering version of Post to Wire, three minutes of joyous power pop.

Above all, this was a gig that showcased Vlautin’s lyrical power and song writing abilities. He has been dubbed the “laureate of the lost” – and that is only a slight exaggeration.

Catch the fire.

Richmond Fontaine is a band on a much deserved, much belated, upward trajectory. SEÁN FLYNN

Haydn Trio Eisenstadt

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Haydn– Trio in C Hob XV: 27.

William Bolcom– Haydn go Seek

Haydn– Trio in E flat Hob XV: 29

Haydn famously rejoiced that his “language is understood the world over”. And yet, says the contemporary American composer William Bolcom, “he never condescends to his audience, in the way that today’s populist music often does”.

What certainly felt like an irresistible, universal appeal was at the centre of this free concert by the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, a Vienna-based piano trio approaching the end (on December 19th, in Tokyo) of a year-long, 157-concert, world-wide tour commemorating the bicentenary of Haydn’s death.

In the trios in C and E flat, their playing was animated and full of joie de vivrein the lively outer movements, expressive and lyrical in the slower middle ones. At the same time, and although she played on a Stradivarius from the same century as these pieces, leader Verena Stourzh was unafraid to introduce stylistic elements from 50 years later. There was, for instance, some very big breathing at the ends of sections, rather romantic – but certainly adding expressive weight if, perhaps, deviating from period style.

Between the trios was a 10-minute piece commissioned from Bolcom for the tour. Its title, Haydn Go Seek, raised the prospect of some poking of fun. In the event, however, it proved an affectionate homage, alluding to the high spirits of Haydn's rondos, some of which it quoted, with Bolcom recreating the master's humour rather than supplying his own. There were gentle subversions of tonality, but enough only to put a 21st century stamp on an 18th century echo.

Here, and throughout, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt were on the same page spiritually and technically; the instrumental balance they achieved in the gallery was close to ideal. Their encore was the intriguingly Bach-reminiscent slow movement from the E major Trio Hob XV: 28. MICHAEL DUNGAN