ASIWYFA, live at Whelan's

First off, a confession – I love And So I Watch You From Afar. That means instead of standing at the back of the room stroking my chin and making pithy observations in my little notebook in the proper music hack tradition, I was up front and centre, soaking up the beard-fuelled, guitar-driven glory of the Belfast post-rock quartet. There is a possibility that I am biased. Despite this, I did diligently take notes while dancing. However, since both the notebook and I got repeatedly drenched by flying beer, my scrawls turned into a soggy useless mess. It was that kind of evening.

ASIWYFA take to the stage with ‘Big Thinks Do Remarkable’ from the new album. ‘Big Thinks’ with its refrain “The sun, the sun, the sun, is in our eyes” could be seen as something of a mission statement from their remarkably happy, chirpy and upbeat third outing All Hail Bright Futures. The early part of the show continues with new material, such as the ironically named sledgehammer of a track ‘Like a Mouse’. Older material includes the blistering ‘Gangs’, the beautifully emotive ‘7 Billion People All Alive At Once’, and of course, ‘Set Guitars To Kill.’

If there is one problem, it is that tonight the intimate surroundings of Whelan’s feels a little too small to contain ASIWYFA and the music is bursting out of the room.