The all-girl punk trio Fair Verona flaunt their influences like chunks of gaudy jewelry. There are flashes of The Pixies, a glint of The Breeders, and a saucy wink in the direction of The Donnas. The formula has an overly familiar ring. However, Fair Verona, who are from Tipperary but dress like escapees from a Seattle charity shop circa 1989, work it with chutzpah.
Tonight’s concert marks the launch of a new single, ‘You Don’t Want To Know About It’, and Fair Verona have brought their A-game to the party. The opening number arrives, as though shot from a cannon, in a squall of power-chords and brutalized drum licks.
The song boasts a familiar indie-pop blueprint, yet front-woman Aoife Cleary transmits an infectious enthusiasm: the material sounds fresh and urgent to her and, as a result, it does to the listener too. At her side, bassist Karla Brazel prowls in the manner of someone auditioning for the part of Kim Gordon’s understudy. In the shadows, meanwhile, drummer Lucy Coady contributes breathless backing vocals, while throwing out stark rhythms that seem to shove the music forward when it might prefer to collapse in a puddle of Stooges riffs.
Fair Verona’s set divides into two distinct archetypes – the cheerfully derivative old stuff and the new, stronger material. Telling them apart is a cinch; for the latter Cleary and Brazel start a bizarre dirty dance that they potentially believe erotic but which – tonight at least – merely reminds you what young women are sometimes like after a dozen alco-pops.
During ‘You Don’t Want To Know About It’, a rockabilly chug tacked to a fantastic hook, a snog even appears to be on the cards. Mercifully, the number is too short and complex to allow time for anything more laborious than lingering eye-contact.
For an encore, they deliver the track a second time. You leave with the chorus rattling about inside your skull, irresistible as a wicked thought – and fired up the certainty that Fair Verona will shortly be waving farewell to obscurity.