Monday night and the gate is low and it's raining. Yes, yes, the sharpest amongst you will have noted that I'm (badly) paraphrasing Half Man Half Biscuit, but there's more than a grain or two of truth about the scenario and with severe flooding having been causing havoc in and around County Cork over the 36 hours prior to CHARLOTTE HATHERLEY'S arrival on the Cyprus Avenue stage, it's with some trepidation that your reviewer and intrepid photographer have set out tonight.
Fortunately, the still-glistening roads are manageable and we reach Cork safely. The weather and the Monday night status, though, have clearly made inroads on the city's nightlife and it's a slightly-less-than-rammed Cyprus Avenue that welcomes Ms. Hatherley's first 'official' visit as a solo artist to the country she got to know so well while one quarter of the hugely-popular Ash. With typical rock'n'roll irony, her former bandmates are about to greet their public again this same week in the UK, but as the wise old sage once said, that's the way it goes.
But I digress. The throng who have braved the elements are all ears, and so they should be for Chazzer's new LP 'The Deep Blue' is a fine record and one which pushes 'Grey Will Fade"s intriguing sonic envelope even further over the edge of something rather wonderful. Even in his rather panic-stricken state, this writer had wondered how she would replicate the intricate, ethereal vocal arrangements displayed on a number of the new songs, but when Ms. Hatherley takes the stage plus a five-strong crew featuring bass, keyboards, second guitar, percussion and a drummer with an immaculate retro Ramones T-shirt and crunches straight into a playful and flirtatious 'I Want You To Know' with the keyboards and percussion lasses taking on the Holly Palmer/ Emm Gryner-style vocal bits that David Bowie's post-mIlliennium band has been using it all begins to make sense.
Charlotte herself is elfin and attractive without being too ostentatious in her tidy, checked shirt, jeans and a pair of the coolest shoes you'll see this side of Italy. She's purposeful and charismatic behind her pristine pink'n'white Telecaster (class!) and as they neatly dispatch a flurry of crowd-pleasers such as a coy'n'effervescent 'Kim Wilde' and a swaggering 'Summer' (which still gives her old muckers a good run for its' rock'n'roll shekel) it's - barring a slightly muddy mix - already sounding bloody promising.
With the crowd suitably softened up, the band begin to tackle the more complex material from the new album. From reading the diary posted on Hatherley's website, it appears this is their first proper appearance as a band, but it's certainly not apparent as they collectively attack the new songs with verve and spirit, clearly keen to revel in these gloriously idiosyncratic melodies. 'Be Thankful' is driven by a classic, pivotal indie-dance bassline, a soupcon of XTC circa 'Oranges & Lemons' and some deliciously seductive harmonies; 'Again' is only marginally less floaty and expansive than its' recorded counterpart, while 'Behave' finds room for both scurrying Pixies-meets-'Trout Mask Replica' guitars without ever losing shedding its' sugar coating and even the strangled freneticism and buffalo-stampeding drums of the oddball 'Very Young' are within grasping distance of recognisable pop tonight. Quite a result, all things considered.
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Charlotte's raunchy, Chrissie Hynde fantasies are given free and fully-realized rein courtesy of the guitar-swipin' Latin lothario described in the excellent 'Bastardo', but perhaps the evening's finest five minutes come via the closing 'Siberia', which is every bit as epic and looming as it is on record, with the band pulling out all the stops and Charlotte clearly revelling in the strange, cyclical chorus ("hold on, in oblivion/ long way down, bending over backwards/ anyody know the way - to get me home from Siberia?") while the crowd collectively hope they'll build the crescendo just that little bit longer. It's the logical way to sign off, but repeated enthusiam prevails and they return for a drilled and nigh-on note perfect of XTC'S evergreen, angular classic 'This Is Pop!", which - in its' special, kooked idiosyncratic way - is exactly the wheel Charlotte Hatherley is re-inventing.
Mission handsomely accomplished, then, but tasty support act CRAYONSMITH also deserve a heads-up. Indeed, things have clearly been moving since your reviewer last saw them at this very venue two years ago. I say 'them', but at the time Crayonsmith featured just leader Ciaran Smyth, a beaten acoustic, a psychedelic yellow glockenspiel and a lot of faith. Since then, he's recorded his debut CD, recruited a keyboard player, a bassist/ second guitarist and written some cool songs without losing the essential shambolic feel. He still whips out the glock for the denouement of the melancholic classic 'The Best Send Off Ever', but with more new material on the block and American gigs in the offing, it seems the sky's the limit for Ciaran these days.
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