Reviews

Irish Times writers review The Dandy Warhols at the Olympia, White Raven at the Hugh Lane Gallery and William Butt & Lance Coburn at the Waterfront Studios, Belfast.

The Dandy Warhols

Olympia, Dublin

It's one thing we can be thankful to mobile-phone companies for. If Vodafone hadn't used The Dandy Warhols' swaggering Bohemian Like You, the possibility of being dropped from their record label would have been staring the Oregon band in the face. As it is, the song saved the Warhols' bacon. Yet for all the success Bohemian Like You provided, it seems the band's creative turnaround is not about to get in the way of even further potential profits.

Why, then, did such a naturally cool bands turn in such a sloppy performance here? The band's latest direction, as heard on the just-released album Welcome To The Monkey House, is attractive, hook-laden electronica that mixes Spiritualized drones with rugged pop. Road-testing such material, a stark contrast to the platinum-selling Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, clearly generated more than several fraught moments for the band and, particularly, lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor.

Despite subduing a partisan crowd with a couple of songs from 1998's . . . The Dandy Warhols Come Down and a raft of tracks from 2000's Thirteen Tales, the bulk of the set was spent as much in showcasing Welcome To The Monkey House as it was in assiduously applying layers of studied indifference.

While keyboard player Zia McCabe enhanced the cool quotient, tinkling ivory with one hand and throwing ciggie-smoking shapes with the other, the overall effect was severely undermined by a devotion to perfecting/affecting boredom. Which was a shame, as the band are often inspiring.

Here they too often got lost in intricate plotting and were nowhere near as dandy as they thought.

Tony Clayton-Lea

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White Raven

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

The declared aim of White Raven is to bring traditional Irish song into the realm of three-part harmony without the songs losing any of their original quality and simplicity. Kathleen Dineen (soprano), David Munderloh (tenor) and Raitis Grigalis (bass) have succeeded to an astonishing degree thanks to an unusual clarity of articulation and an exquisite vocal blend.

Some of the songs were collected from the late Elizabeth Cronin of Macroom; Dineen, from the same area, has a natural feel for the folk idiom, which she has transmitted to her partners, respectively from the US and Latvia. To hear them singing with the greatest fluency in Irish, Spanish and English was a joy.

Dineen sang Lord Gregory unaccompanied in true folk style and must have drawn tears to many eyes; hardly less moving was Grigalis when he sang The Lass Of Aughrim, accompanied by Dineen on a small harp. She also played for The Last Rose Of Summer, sung by Munderloh. Thomas More is not now esteemed as once he was, but this song and, more especially, Oft In The Stilly Night, sung by the trio, show he can still find a way into the heart.

Before one heard of Bach or Beethoven, one had heard many of these songs, including I Know My Love By His Way Of Walking and The Water Is Wide, I Cannot Get Over, and to hear them so lovingly recreated was not only a trip down memory lane but also a revelation of their power still to stir the heart.

Douglas Sealy

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William Butt & Lance Coburn

Waterfront Studio, Belfast

Sonata in G minor - Bach. Trois Pièces - Nadia Boulanger. Drei Kleine Stücke Op 11 - Webern. Cello Sonata - Debussy

Refinement, attention to detail and the most complete understanding between the performers are prerequisites for any chamber-music performance, and especially when playing Webern's rarefied Three Little Pieces, Op 11, which show his aphoristic style at its most condensed. This is music of few notes, and the notes that there are have to be played not only with meticulous observance of the dynamic markings and shades of nuance but also with insight into the composer's expressive world.

This is what the English cellist William Butt and the New Zealand-born pianist Lance Coburn provided. It was good to have a chance to hear a live performance of a work once regarded as a classic of modernism and subsequently rather neglected. The Webern was aptly paired with another work that has been grossly underrated in its time, Debussy's late, enigmatic Cello Sonata, where both players relished the murky sonorities of their instruments' lower registers.

Before that we heard the Three Pieces by Nadia Boulanger, subsequently famous as the teacher of Copland, Glass and others. She stopped composing in the 1920s and in later years (she lived until 1979) acquired a rather intimidating image. These fresh, attractive pieces combine an impressionistic style with a neoclassical temperament.

Bach's G minor sonata was originally written for viola da gamba and harpsichord, and although it lends itself to the modern cello, some heaviness is unavoidable when the keyboard part is played on a modern piano, but the playing was clear and rhythmical.

Dermot Gault