Music
30 Oct 13

KeyWest live at Vicar Street

Playing their biggest ever hometown headliner, the Dublin-based five-piece confirmed from the off that they really know how to work a crowd. Indeed, the band could do no wrong in front of a sell-out, predominantly female audience. These guys are stars in the making.

Opening with a dramatic ‘Straight Through My Heart’, which was met with a delirious response, they continued with cuts from their debut album The Message. These included the soaring ‘Fight For Love’ before they unveiled the brand new ‘Messages From God’ – dubbed “a special song for a special occasion.”
There’s nothing low-key about an outfit who honed their sound busking successfully in Dublin and Galway. Working off that experience, they truly are masters of eliciting maximum crowd responses, whether through dramatic crescendos or carefully choreographed stage movements. There’s even a drum marathon at one point, where four band members manically bash snares and attack various percussive instruments. Even for the uninitiated, the tunes have a familiar radio-friendly quality, with nods to U2, The Killers and Coldplay.
A Bob Marley medley featuring ‘Redemption Song’, ‘No Woman No Cry’ and ‘Could You Be Loved’ fuels the party atmosphere, before they bring things down a tad for their latest single ‘Wait For Me’, a slow-burning, almost boy-band-ish ballad. Make no mistake: this is a band going places, fast...