16 Horsepower

16 HORSEPOWER,

EL DIABLO

Whelan’s, Dublin

Here be monsters. 16 Horsepower’s David Eugene Edwards may have started the gig with a 6/8 jig on a 1950s vintage bandonion, but this is one band that will always resist the yee-ha factor. The Colorado-Gallic ensemble are as unflinching as the pulpit-pounders who inhabit their songs (Edwards being, like the Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano, the son of a preacher man), a fact which may have confused elements of this capacity crowd out for hoedowns, yelping at the first whiff of a five-string banjo.

But 16 Horsepower make few concessions. Even on an old standard like ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, Pascal Humbert will favour bowed bull fiddle over a railroad beat, and if the quartet borrow tooth and clawhammer sentiments from their spiritual kin the Louvins and the Carters, the stage presence is closer to Joy Division via The Gun Club.

Earlier in the night, El Diablo recalled some of the great duets of our time: Stuart and Isabella, Shane and Kirsty, Jane and Serge, Howie and Lisa, Lee and Nancy. The rhythm section are just the right side of loose, the Tele and the Strat link arms until closing time, and Anna Carey strikes a fine imbalance between the seraphic and the slatternly. There seems to be no end of great songs like ‘Heat’ and ‘Dancing Steps’ (the one with the batshit guitar bit), and Billy Bob Thornton really should commission the dustbowl lullaby with the “All the pretty little horses” refrain.

Decent Dublin rock ‘n’ roll bands have been scarce enough in recent times. Cool ones, in the hip flask swiggin’ sense, have been almost non-existent. Until now.