Hot Press/Bacardi Unplugged Competition

Hot Press/Bacardi Unplugged Competition (UCC, Cork)

Success, browbeaten hitmakers all too frequently inform us, is a double-edged blade: it cuts both ways and can be as cruel as it is kind. Much the same might be said for the phenomenon that is the unplugged acoustic session. While it can provide an environment that highlights the stripped-down beauties of a song, it can also reveal the naked mistakes. Happily, at this second of three regional heats in the Hot Press Bacardi Unplugged competition, instances of the former effect easily outnumbered the latter.

First into the breach in the daunting surrounds of a packed college bar were Niall Powell and Alan Colfer from Waterford. Their downbeat, bluesy material, thumpingly underscored by a throbbing double bass, proved convincingly winsome and lovelorn, a fitting soundtrack, perhaps, for a 3am, bitter-and-twisted wallow in a Deep South juke joint. Powell’s mid-Atlantic growl, pitched somewhere between the River Suir and the Mississippi Delta, was the major plus point, the minus being the fact that this was exactly the type of stuff you’d expect in an unplugged set.

John Buggy and Borderline, meanwhile, sketched out a blueprint for a jazzed-up, sax-fuelled, Commitments-style wall of sound. The Kerry-based ensemble’s brash approach saw them skip merrily from antsy, piano-led stompers to earthy, early Van Morrisonisms. It made for some feisty fun and it’ll be interesting if we ever get to see them doodle on a broader canvas.

From Dublin, All Eyes and Ears offer a type of zany, harmony-soaked whimsy that has long been the trademark of off-kilter American acts like They Might Be Giants. They certainly peddle a daft-enough line in madcap wordplay but, as is the nature of this particular beast, it occasionally comes across as self-consciously japesome.

Still, the lead vocals were swapped around with breezy confidence between the fella and the girl and their last number, ‘Fly Me Freedom’, was distinguished by a genuinely eccentric percussion frenzy. It may well have tempted one of the mildly-inebriated young scholars in the audience to pen a dissertation along the lines of The Re-emergence Of The Bongo As A Viable Option In Popular Music.

Next up was the local option, a Corkonian outfit going under the moniker of Temple Door. Aided and abetted by big-lunged support from the resident Leeside massive, they proved themselves more than worthy of the fevered acclaim. We were treated to languid tales of love lost and won, the sort of plaintive material that has earned much kudos for the Prefab Sprouts of this world. Vocal duties were again shared between a young wan and a young fella and their well-practiced line-juggling even went so far as to ignite a little audience participation. Not bad going for a rainy Tuesday in January. Extra marks, incidentally, for the band’s entrepreneurial spirit: they used the occasion to flog a few T-shirts outside the bar.

The eventual winners of the heat were the last to enter the fray. At first, Fiona McMahon and Soup Fiction merely offered some standard barroom boogie, two parts Joni Mitchell to one part Tammy Wynette. But as their short set progressed, they made a successful foray into the modern urban blues territory that has been so elegantly annexed by the likes of Portishead. The judges’ final deliberations saw the Limerick act shade it by a whisker from Temple Door and they now go forward to the final of the competition in which six grand’s worth of Bacardi-sponsored booty will be up for grabs. They’ll have as good a chance as anyone of making off with the swag.

• Kevin Barry