Ten Speed Racer: live at Whelan's

From the opening Rickenbacker-led build-up of ‘Come Over’, Ten Speed Racer serve notice that their speedometer goes all the way to 11.
Powering through the droning harmonics of ‘Freewheeling’ it’s clear that their recent touring has rendered them as taut and brutally adroit. They blaze through the MC5-riff heavy ‘I Just Don’t Wanna’ like Queens of the Stone Age without the devil-horn salutes and novelty facial hair. Live, ‘Fifteen’ conveys its inherent drama better than the album version and a terse but accessible ‘Head’ (abetted by the re-soldered light desk) gets a big reception. The dynamics are deftly used and the vocal phrasing is studied and rhythmically clever, particularly on the new single ‘By My Side’, reminscent of early Spiritualized.
‘No One Love’ works a BRMC-esque groove that segues into ‘Don’t Go Out’ from their early Girls And Magazines EP. There’s even a whiff of the dirty CBGBs glamour of late ’70s American punk on the souped-up ‘Eskimo Beach Boy’, a tune which brings the evening to a suitably uproarious close.
10SR have managed to melt their graven influences into a new image. It’s a shame they’re from Dublin – if they hailed from Detroit, New York or Auckland we’d salivate on cue at the mention of their name.