Cobra Starship Live at The Academy

With song titles like ‘You’re Not In On The Joke’ and ‘Pete Wentz Is The Only Reason We’re Famous’ (he is, apparently), I’m frankly a little worried about what awaits me at the Academy tonight. Sure enough, it’s packed to the rafters with scantily clad kids, so I dutifully take up my spot beside someone’s Ma and try to look nonchalant while a miniature hipster elbows me in the thigh.
After a frankly disorientating warm-up by Georgia rockers Family Force 5 (is that a bass guitar or a machine gun?), Cobra Starship step onto the stage with precisely the measure of confidence you’d expect from a band who’ve sold-out their first ever Irish show weeks before breakout album Hot Mess is even released here.

And a Hot Mess it is. Nary a tune is cracked open without an introductory 15-minute banter session (apparently three albums of songs still isn’t enough to fill an hour) and that’s nothing compared to the amount of time the energetic fivesome spend commanding me to spread the message of “the Cobra”.

When it comes to trucker hats and electro raps, Cobra Starship’s lyrics pretty much sum it up; “I came here to make you dance tonight/I don’t care if I’m a guilty pleasure for you.” Song-wise, ‘Kiss My Sass’ is peppy enough and the titular ‘Hot Mess’ makes for some mild Virgins-esque funk pop thrills. However, a dozen or so songs later, I’m convinced that their trashy synth-rock works best in small doses.

On the plus side, stringy frontman Gabe Saporta is a fantastic little mover, as the Ma to my right might say, using keytar-player Victoria Asher as a prop in his wildly sexual gyrations and cracking out every skinny white boy move in the book, from the Sprinkler to the Kevin Bacon.
With a two-song encore still to come, Saporta tells us for the umpteenth time tonight, how delighted he is to be launching the tour in Ireland. “I feel like you really get us, y’know?” he whines. He’s probably being ironic, but I’m feeling far too tenderised by the mess of grinding pop rock to tell.