Gig Review: Cast of Cheers @ Whelan’s, Fri 13 August 2010

Friday night, heading to Whelan’s, that’s not really a new thing for The Clink Collective. But on Friday past it wasn’t all jagerbombs and deciding if the DJ was playing ‘good stuff’. We went along to see the much praised and seemingly ubiquitous Cast of Cheers. You can’t read an article on Irish music without seeing their clever moniker appear.

So the gig started as it normally does, with the support, Enemies. We must confess we hadn’t heard of these kids before the evening. We were impressed by their first number, a raucous rocky instrumental that involved two drums for the intro. Pretty good. Then another instrumental and then another – turns out they don’t sing. Not uncommon, but a new experience for us. We can’t say we were made into fans – we felt that vocals would add something to their act, but we liked their sound, they had an Arcade Firey element to them with 2 drum kits on stage each bashing out a different tribal beat.

So to the main event. Cast of Cheers came on and just fired into an amazing set of high-octane bass driven numbers. The energy was palpable, the audience bobbing in a tuned-in trance.  The front man looks like he’s on fast forward, strumming and mini head banging along. The Cast engage with the audience and the energy they exude infects their fans.

To us there was an Arctic Monkey like hint to the tunes – disjointed bass plucked intro’s, the aforementioned infectious energy and a front man with the swagger of Alex Turner. But we would like to see a little more change of pace from these guys. They undoubtedly have talent, and the signs are good for them, but a little something to break it up now and again would be good, and we never thought we’d say this, but a little bit more on the effects side wouldn’t go amiss. I’m not talking Jean Micheal Jarre, but you know.

They played a bunch of new tunes, which compare very much to their debut album, so we wonder will a second album simply be an extension of the first, or will there be something new in there. We hope something new, cause there’s no doubting these boys have talent.

Picture courtesy of state.ie.