Reviews

Irish Times critics work to walk around Dublin and look for the spark in Whelans before some fine tuning in the National Concert Hall

It's an Audio Detour: Work and Play, Around Dublin city

"Give your partner a little smile," says the voice in my head. Can do. "Do you see the pedestrianised walkway?" enquires the voice a few seconds later. Um, well, now that you mention it, no, I don't. "You should now be turning right onto the boardwalk." Oh Christ . . . Finding your steps - and particularly your pace - on the fifth edition of It's an Audio Detour is a cognitive challenge, an intriguing effort of social choreography and - for those not easily embarrassed - lots of fun.

Devised by Maebh Cheasty and Fiona Hallinan (who goes by the name Fink), with sound design and soothingly voiced instructions by Peter Morrow, it is an MP3-guided journey from Grattan Bridge, and it includes a Luas trip, a bike ride for one partner, hopscotch for the other, and concludes in a pub in the IFSC. It is meticulously timed, contextually playful, slightly confusing, and requires oceans of trust and an easy ability to follow directions. For those who have neither, it is still doable, but not exactly idiot-proof. Requiring some familiarity with the city, this detour is not tourist-friendly.

In an almost neurotically cautious age for performance, it is admirable that this open-air experience comes without a chaperone or a safety rail. But, having earlier worried that a plain-clothes Audio Detourist might have been following me, after a couple of hiccups I began to hope one was.

Morrow's soundscape is nicely calming, though, and the text is gently wry, letting voices chime in during the tour's idle moments to offer either documentary interviews about their working lives or to impart dubious advice: "Skip the queue," goes one such voice, urging civil disobedience to people who must slavishly follow orders.

It is never lost on us that in taking the Audio Detour we have become performers; our strange behaviour and daft little movements rarely occurring without an accidental audience.

I'm not sure I learned much new about Dublin, but it reaffirmed my belief in the heroic composure of Dubliners. When two giggling people with enormous headphones, locked in an absurdly amateur pas de deux, barely merit a second glance, you realise just how hard it is these days to make a show of yourself.

Runs hourly between 5.30pm and 8.30pm from May 8th to 11th

- Peter Crawley

Magnolia Electric Co, Whelan's, Dublin

Diminutive and dishevelled, Jason Molina shuffles on stage wearing a plain denim jacket and plain cowboy hat, every inch the humble songsmith. With his bandmates all sporting a variety of straggly beards, wrinkled T-shirts and practically wiping sleep from their eyes, Magnolia Electric Company appear to be the perfect physical embodiment of the world-weary alt-country Molina is renowned for. But while there is a frazzled grandeur in the music, the only electricity in this desultory performance is in the band's name.

Since beginning his recording career in the mid-1990s under the name Songs: Ohia, utilising an ever-rotating cast of bandmates, Molina has been a prolific and challenging songwriter. Of course, it's impossible to write lonely, creaky folk songs without the obligatory Will Oldham comparisons and collaborations, but since Songs: Ohia morphed into Magnolia Electric Company in 2003, Molina's sound has become more full-blooded country rock than plaintive singer-songwriter. There are many moments in this set that seem struck by the spirit of late-1970s Neil Young and Crazy Horse - all winding, crunching guitar solos and quavering vocals, far from the introspective, sparse sound Molina became known for. But while the songs in their own right are quality country rock, the set as a whole soon becomes repetitive. Molina might be a songwriter of considerable range, but it is difficult, on this evidence, to argue that he deserves particular praise when the alternative country scene boasts excellent acts such as Wilco, Lambchop, Calexico and, yes, Will Oldham.

A more enthusiastic performance might have altered that opinion, but this was a band going through some pretty tired motions. Refusing to do an encore after a very brief set, Molina and his company's swift exit left the crowd awkwardly waiting for the houselights to come up. An anticlimactic conclusion, then, to a perfunctory performance.

- Davin O'Dwyer

Galway Baroque Singers, RTÉ CO/Ó Duinn, NCH, Dublin

Handel - The King Shall Rejoice. Descend, kind pity. Laudate pueri. Mozart - Divertimento in D K136. Regina Coeli. Vesperae solennes de confessore K339.

The Galway Baroque Singers have exactly the same problem as most Irish choirs - not enough men, and tenors in particular. But in most other respects they stand apart. They sing less like a large choir (they number around 75) than a chamber group. They rarely strain after volume of tone, and, in spite of some fraying in the lower lines, their delivery is balanced and musicianly.

It seemed entirely appropriate for this programme of Handel and Mozart that the choir should be joined by English soprano Emma Kirkby, as musically chaste and pure a singing icon as was produced during the closing decades of the 20th century.

Kirkby is a performer who appeals directly to the senses without recourse to any of the mannerisms of the modern opera singer. The voice is small, clear and true, and is never made to seek an effect of drama or grandeur that's not within its reach. The expressive range is narrow, but it is exploited with precision, and it is highly effective. There is a straightforward, touching quality in the Kirkby style that never seems to have been sullied by inappropriate striving.

It was a real pleasure to hear Kirkby in Handel's Laudate pueri Dominum, and two pieces by Mozart, the Regina coeli K127 and the Vesperae solennes de confessore K339, where the other soloists (mezzo soprano Alison Browner, tenor Eamonn Mulhall, and bass baritone John Molloy) functioned as a support team.

Mulhall also gave an insipid account of an aria from Handel's Theodora, Descend, kind pity, which the evening could well have done without, especially given the casual-sounding roughness of the playing of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Proinnsías Ó Duinn.

Orchestra and conductor were on mixed form, really only lifting themselves clear of routine responses when sparked by the charm of Mozart's irresistible Divertimento in D, K136.

- Michael Dervan