Album Review: Live At Record Room Vol 1

A mere 35 years after the release of seminal Limerick compilation, The Reindeer Age, comes this beautifully packaged follow-up of sorts.

Recorded live in the Record Room, an intimate basement venue downstairs from The Commercial Bar on Catherine Street, its 13 tracks underline just how vibrant and diverse the city’s music scene is at the moment.

We’re long-term admirers of Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies and they don’t disappoint with ‘1984’, a wonderfully bonkers song worthy of primetime PiL.

Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies

The good things we’ve been hearing about Small Church turn out to be true with ‘Fever Dream’, a psychedelic wig-out par excellence with Andreea Mocanu singing like her life depends on it.

Sounding far bigger than a two-piece have a right to, T.A. Narrative’s ‘Loves Hold’ is a pulsating slab of electro-rock redolent of early Ministry and Depeche Mode when things started to get seriously dark.

Strange Boy tells numerous home truths on ‘Damned’, a wonderfully dextrous rap underpinned by beats that are as jazzy as they are trad-y.

There’s a similar Lankum-go-hip hop vibe about Hazey Haze’s ‘Talk To Someone’, another impassioned Limrap anthem that cuts lyrically to the bone.

Elsewhere there’s dreamy ambient techno from Paddy Mulcahy (‘Space Café’); Dylan Flynn & The Dead Poets provide the missing link between The War On Drugs and The 1975 (‘Nowhere To Live’); Anna’s Anchor shows alt. folk love to his hometown (‘Thomond Bridge’); Laura Duff wrings every ounce of emotion out of her soul-pop offering (‘21’); 50 Foot Woman conjure up a Britney Spears-referencing wall of garage band noise (‘When The Bombs Fall’); The Personal Vanity Project nod to Joy Division ('Track 94'); SWEETS come on like a Shannonside Killing Joke (‘Ing Ya’); and The Low Field do the quiet/then loud/then quiet again thing brilliantly (‘Heaviness’).

All killer, zero filler, Live At Record Room Vol 1 is exclusively available from the good folk at Steamboat Records in Limerick.

8/10

You can purchase a copy of Live At Record Vol 1 on vinyl here.