Dirty Pretty Things @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

“You fucking love it, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Dirty Pretty Things alight upon the stage of Mandela Hall, an unruly rock ‘n’ roll tornado, all braggart charm and uncompromising swagger. How could we not fucking love it? Scanning the capacity crowd, with their de rigeur ‘Up The Bracket’ t-shirts and pasty-faced boho chic, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d wandered into a Libertines’ revivalist meeting. But, you can forget about chasing the dragon to some Albion idyll, Dirty Pretty Things are all caught up in the here and now, ‘Doctors And Dealers’ supplies some gloriously bad medicine, full of shady characters and addictive rhythms. ‘Deadwood’ sees the crowd pitch forward, enticed by the siren call of those screeching guitars, the human wave breaking upon the security barriers. Summoning this mayhem is the stripped to the waist figure of Gary Powell, a controlled explosion of a drummer: at one stage even his awed bandmates gather in homage around his drum kit. The punters love it, and the feeling’s mutual, as Barat and Powell constantly tell us, “Belfast this is fucking brilliant!” Barat is the consummate tease, asking “do you want more?” before launching into a belligerent cover of ‘In The City’. It’s been magnificent, but the nostalgists are crying out for a Libertines’ fix. They kindly oblige with ‘I Get Along’ and it is glorious.