Wednesday 31 March 2021

Music 20/21

       I can remember the last gig I attended: the basement of a pub in Dublin City centre, a Sunday afternoon, all the way back in March 2020, the launch of a friend’s new album. The cosy faux-’old pub’ room was decked with an odd mixture of posters and pictures - black and white images of Ireland in the 1950s, GAA teams and scantily clad females - and planted against one of the walls, there was an awkward snug, done up like a shebeen with lattice windows. I gave in to temptation and had two of what tasted like the creamiest pints of stout that had ever passed my lips.

As ever, the drink knocked the itchy Sunday feeling out of me and I successfully unwound. A few numbers into the support act’s set, one of the songs sent me somewhere else for three minutes and as a result I was open to whatever was played for the rest of the afternoon. I find that happens at gigs: one good song or moment leaves you receptive to the rest and more generous and supportive of the artists. 

I had the usual little chats with familiar faces from previous gigs, some of them barely more than an exchange of a few words, and I ordered a bowl of chips with my second pint. I could feel the velvet balloon of wellbeing swelling up inside me and I smiled when I saw lovers entwined on a couch in one of the nooks in the venue.  

Stepping out of the venue, half-drunk and ready for a curry, the streets were lightly buzzing. A meal in a popular Indian and then a cycle home, my last night out in town for thirteen months. A few days later, Leo Varadkar delivered that unnervingly understated speech that introduced some ominous words like ‘wave’ and ‘cocooning’. The live music scene as it was went into hibernation, and musicians were limited to broadcasting performances from their own homes on social media platforms. I checked out a few of these but because I was already spending so much time online I wasn’t very enthusiastic about looking at screens again outside of work.   

Martin Carthy live from his house in Robin Hood’s Bay gave me cheer. He was rusty for the first half hour, inevitably I suppose, but then got into his stride, finding his unmistakeable foghorn voice and fluidity in his playing. The quality was of secondary importance to me. He is someone I have seen in concert five or six times so it was comforting enough to see him and hear him again in whatever capacity. A reminder of his tremendous knowledge and good humour.  

During the pandemic period, I finally bought a smartphone and then headphones and began to access as much music as possible using the Spotify app. This was facilitated by the daily dog walks and by my semi-regular runs. Thanks to Spotify’s enormous catalogue, I was able to dive into the works of Black Sabbath, sampling the first six albums, re-visit The Fall’s mighty oeuvre, listen to albums I’d always meant to try like PIL’s first two, The Human League’s Dare, The Court of the Crimson King, a lot of post-punk, a lot of krautrock, New Order, plus a fair amount of new music. 

Because it’s been such a long winter, I have found myself leaning towards bright electronic sounds - early albums by New Order, The Pet Shop Boys’ Very - and venturing into contemporary pop music which often sounds like the aforementioned acts. HAIM, Thundercat, Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift. Light, optimistic-sounding stuff, not very demanding, delightfully surface-y, a lot of it designed to be played in heaving pubs and nightclubs filled with shiny young people. A far cry from my last ‘gig, stout and chips’ outing but a cheerful vision to have in these times.