Album Review: Ten Speed Racer, Live in Dublin 2004

On July 3, 2004, legendary Dublin indie guitar-slingers 10 Speed Racer took to the stage of Dublin’s Temple Bar Music Centre (now the Button Factory) for the last time. The recording was lost for 20 years, until discovered by Joe Chester on an old unlabelled hard drive. There were, the band stress, “no overdubs, no fixing”, with the songs sounding exactly as they were performed in that room two decades ago.

The uber-catchy ‘Hang On Starlight’, ‘Head’ and ‘The Only Light’ weld fuzzbox guitar riffs and pounding rhythms to a distinct pop sensibility, at odds with the breakneck punk ‘n’ roll of ‘Eskimo Beach Boy’. The brilliantly helter-skelter ‘Your Demon Heart’ sounds as vital now as ever, while the cascading ‘Someday Soon’ has a seriously infectious chorus. The choral vocals of the more restrained ‘Fifteen’, the deliciously named ‘Sidewalk Monkey Typhoid’ and the glorious balladry of ‘Lunar Junkies’ showcase their softer side.

The gig ended with up to 40 audience members rushing the stage, a chaotic finale that proved unsalvageable for this live release, along with six other songs that couldn’t be rescued, which is why this gets a score of 7 rather than 8 or 9. The 10 tracks that survive, however, do enough to remind us how good 10SR were, and perhaps point the way to what might have been.

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