Reviews

Reviews of the Pernice Brothers and El Diablo at Whelans and the RTE Concert Orchestra at the National Concert Hall.

Pernice Brothers

Whelan's, Dublin

By Edward Power

Brothers look like five petrol-pump attendants on their way to a Dungeons and Dragons convention but play dreamy country-pop that even hip people can't help loving.

In fact, the problem may be that only the hipster demographic is really wise to the misty-eyed New Englanders. Despite critical acclaim and cult adoration, mainstream recognition has consistently eluded this dishevelled band of "brothers" (only two of whom are actual siblings).

Curiously, they are not in the least bitter. Judging by their jaunty turn here, Pernice Brothers remain happy to languish in obscurity for as long as it will have them.

Frontman Joe Pernice cuts an especially jovial dash, joshing with hecklers and joking darkly that he was touring Europe instead of taking his new wife on honeymoon. Given that he comes across as a profoundly miserable sod on record, his twinkling stage-presence was mildly disconcerting. However, the gags stopped when Pernice took up his guitar; his songs are heavy on angst and light on . . . well, levity. What sets the material apart from the alt.country pack is Pernice's gorgeous voice, a honeyed falsetto that lends his musings an ambivalent bitter-sweetness. As he ruminates bleakly over mortality and tarnished love, it is never clear whether Pernice is wallowing in or toasting life's penchant for upsetting the apple-cart when you least expect.

Inevitably, the rest of the group was reduced to bit-player status, a blur of bad haircuts and ill-fitting spectacles, toiling anonymously through a set that drew heavily from their sparkling new album Yours, Mine and Ours and its lush 2001 predecessor The World Won't End.

A frenetic Working Girls suggested a missing link between the Byrds and the Smiths; Our Time Has Passed mixed bedroom-poet ennui and fizzy power-pop licks and the languid Water Ban culminated in a gorgeous Chili Peppers-tinged slide-guitar solo.

Although a Pernice Brothers' show will never tremor to the sound of new ground being broken, country-rock delivered with such doe-eyed poignancy is hard to resist. Who says looks are everything?

**********

O'Sullivan, RTÉCO/

Ó Duinn

NCH, Dublin

By Martin Adams

Prometheus Overture - Beethoven, The Soldier Tir'd - Arne, The Jewel Song - Gounod, Symphony No 4 - Boyce, Gopak - Mussorgsky, The Last Rose of Summer - arr. Moore, Parla-Walzer - Arditi, L'Arlésienne Suite No 2 - Bizet

This lunchtime orchestral concert offered the pleasure of light things well done. The musicians of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra gave a fine account of many of the solos in Bizet's L'Arlésienne Suite No 2, especially in the Minuet, where the chamber-music responsiveness of flute, saxophone and harp was memorable. In Boyce's short, concerto-style Symphony No 4, the horns' prominent, Handelian duet was impeccably done.

From the drawing-room nostalgia of Moore's The Last Rose of Summer to the Italian-romantic flair of Arditi's Parla-Walter, soprano Cara O'Sullivan showed a deep, communicative understanding of contrasting styles. Yet her most impressive moment came in The Soldier Tir'd from Arne's Artaxerxes, even though its extreme virtuosity sometimes put her technique under pressure. What a compelling combination of musical intelligence, impressive stage presence and fearless panache! This concert's winning qualities owed much to Proinnsías

Ó Duinn's light-handed, economical conducting. He and the RTÉCO negotiated the twists and turns of the arias with deftness and relaxed precision. It was as neat an example of orchestral accompaniment as I have heard in some time.

This was one of those pleasing occasions when music seemed to speak for itself and when musicians seemed determined to do justice to works that, being mostly of the lighter kind, need to be done well.

Some ragged ensemble in the opening item, Beethoven's Prometheus Overture, was a rare lapse from standards that were generally high. The concluding item, the Farandole from the Bizet suite, made an ideal ending - healthy music that in its own way is just perfect, and that produced quiet smiles all around the audience and orchestra.

**********

El Diablo

Whelan's, Dublin

By Tony Clayton-Lea

Dublin's El Diablo play it straight down the line - no quirks, no great notions and a paucity of grand gestures; the only frills to be seen are on their shirts, blouses and jeans. The core of the band is Anna Carey, Patrick Freyne and Pól Ó Conghaile, although in this instance a rhythm section and fiddle player supplements the unit, additions that place the band's rough-hewn but wholly neat country songs in a gravelly, textured context.

Two albums in, El Diablo are still far away from any kind of commercial success, a fact that doesn't seem to overly bother them. Too mature to possibly care about the fickle and false nature of commerce-driven music, they seem thoroughly comfortable in their niche. This is their immediate charm and quite likely their eventual undoing, as despite the good songs, the back-to-basics nature of the performance and the honesty of the sentiments, a lack of ambition occasionally rides roughshod over everything.

Yet the band are well versed in the wicked, woeful ways of Nashville, and because of this the material rises well above the ordinary: I'm Not Any Good, Boyfriend, The Wandering One, My Wild Rose, Jerusalem Hills and Take Me Down are the kind of fertile songs that feature lingering shadows of doubt and foreboding long nights. Defiant misfits in a world of beseeching conformists, El Diablo strive for a low-key approach and resolutely attain it. It might do them (and their audience) some good if they aim a bit higher, that's all.

El Diablo play Whelan's, tonight; The King's Venue, Waterford on Friday and The High Stool, Limerick on Saturday.