Reviews

Reviewed today are The Thrills at the Spirit Store, Dundalk

Inevitably, expectations are high for Ireland's latest major label signings, and you've got to feel a pang of avuncular admiration for an unknown band who hang their wares out to dry via an introductory, if somewhat brief, Irish tour. The newly hired tour bus sits outside the venue, which is stuffed with people eager to see the Next Big Things, and the dreaded feeling of déjà vu visits us once again.

By the second song, Say It Ain't So, it's clear that even if The Thrills are dropped by their record company after the release of their début album they deserve all the plaudits that have been thrown at them over the past few months. Playing a set that's as brief as is it perfectly paced (nine songs, 40-odd minutes; why can't every gig be like this?), The Thrills pay lip service to the oppressive sense of supposition and give the finger to self-indulgence.

All the songs played will more than likely appear on the band's forthcoming album, and judging by the sheer quality of Hollywood Kids, Your Love Is Like Las Vegas, Old Friends New Lovers, Big Sur, Til The Tide Creeps In, Santa Cruz and One Horse Town, we have a classy (if not classic) début in the making. The band's blueprint is not an unbridled, enthusiastic homage to The Stooges' dark, brash back catalogue, but the somewhat more hazy blue-skies West Coast country rock of Buffalo Springfield.

Naggingly familiar yet wonderfully their own, the songs trip out, instrumentally taut, abrasively hook-laden and spectrally harmonic. For all the right retro reasons, a band with a name that does exactly what it says on the tin.