Grand Pocket Orchestra, live at Whelan's

A pretty paltry crowd has made their way to the Whelan’s floor by 8pm (my, that’s very early in the evening) to catch fresh-faced teen duo Hipster Youth, prompting more than one murmur from the shadows that it’s rather like being in the pair’s bedroom with them. The mutterers are not far wrong: HY mastermind Aidan Wall and live partner David Geraghty (no, not himself from Bell X1) perch themselves on two stacking chairs, hugging a wealth of synths, keyboards and other such nerdy music-making equipment into their laps with all the pomp of Denis Norden eating an orange. Luckily, the juvenile stage set-up (it is only their third gig after all) is immediately forgotten when the duo launch into their first scuzzy, melodic chiptune ballad. Marvellous stuff.
Next, the stage is warmed by Belfast trio Girls Names, who’ve managed to weld deadpan vocals and grinding guitar riffs into some very sunny noise-pop – AKA the kind of tunes that secured Brooklyn boys The Drums a spot atop the hip lists earlier this year.
Our headliners Grand Pocket Orchestra, if you didn’t already know, are a mad scientist of a band. Pulling out the xylophone and the melodica almost as frequently as the guitar, they resemble a great many things, one of them being a group of Toymaster employees hepped up on caffeine pills. Front maniac Patrick Hannah’s face will be familiar to fans of gross things (see music video for the irresistible ‘Basketballs’), and I have to admit that there’s something oddly alluring about his cutesy cum mentally disturbed stage presence. You’re never sure whether to hurl abuse at him or give him a great big hug, which only adds to the confusion of not being able to identify which World Of Wonder instrument you’re hearing.
The songs, although it seems more appropriate to refer to them as sonic mini-adventures, average at about one and a half minutes in length. On debut album The Ice Cream, the ship we’re all here to launch, this kind of constant chopping and changing of sounds makes for a thoroughly thrilling ride. Tonight, it upsets the flow of the show, making it very difficult to enjoy their manic pop some of the time. Then, of course, there is the rest of the time, when GPO sound exploratory, gutsy, quirky and brilliant, and tunes like the all-conquering ‘Crave The Flesh’ and the charming ‘I Would Liken You To Oceans’ suddenly begin to make a whole lot of sense. A pocket full of curiosities, then...