Headgear

It’d be nice to think that tonight’s full house is a result of him being afforded Hot Press ‘Single of the Fortnight’, but the fact of the matter is that Darragh Dukes has been something of a local hero for over a decade. First as a member of They Do It With Mirrors, then as Fatbuck and now as his second one-man band, Headgear, who’ve been mentioned of late in all the right UK indie circles.

Having previously confined his activities to the studio – there’s an 8-track jobbie in his living room – Dukes is now setting his sights on making Headgear work as a live entity. While still debating the merits of having a “real” drummer as opposed to loops, tonight finds him joined on stage by a guitarist, keyboard-player and co-singer who, keeping things in the family, turns out to be his sister Orla.

This is no mere Nepotism, with Ms. Dukes’ deliciously honeyed vocals the perfect foil for her brother’s Tom Waits before his voice broke rasp.

It’s all a bit tentative at first but then that ‘Single of the Fortnight’ of theirs, ‘Halibut’, arrives on the scene and the “next big thing” claims start to make sense. A gloriously off-kilter pop song, it hints at Beck without turning into a full-blown Hansen tribute. The energy level dips a bit with the acoustic ‘Widescreen’, but then surges with ‘Where This Good Life Goes’ and ‘This Comes To Pass’, a slow-build anthem that sounds like the Flaming Lips covering Happy Mondays. No, really.

Support band Deadbodies add a bit of rock ‘n’ muscle to the closing ‘Wonderdog’, another skewed gem which has at least one A&R man scribbling furiously in his notebook.

There’s still work to be done on knitting the different elements together, but keep up the present rate of progress and Headgear could become very precious.