TERRY CLARKE

TERRY CLARKE (Whelan's, Dublin)

LIKE AN extra on a John T. Davis road movie, Clarke ambles onstage with the nonchalance of one who's heard the pep talk, sized up the opposition and decided to play his own game regardless of what the rest are doing. And with his arrival heralded by the stupefyingly brilliant Bewildered String Band, fiddles and sundry other strings aglow, it's no small wonder that he rests coolly on the belief that the music can speak for itself.

In Whelan's, Clarke found an audience evenly divided between old faithfuls and the unconverted. The 12-string guitar provided a lush and richly textured introduction to the material. Of Irish parents who took the Rosslare boat, Clarke made no secret of his complete submission to Irish ways and (the occasional) Irish law. 'Irish Rockabilly Blues' showcased his considerable narrative skills, while 'Sligo Honeymoon 1946' excised a suitcaseful of stored memories of his own parents' early days of marriage.

Partnered by regular co-

conspirator and journeyman Henry McCullough on electric and slide guitars, Clarke ran the gamut of blues, low amp rock, and rolling folk stories that entranced most of his audience with their erudition and insight.

'Blue In My Heart', a love song with an ache at its core slowed the pulse for a while but Clarke's tentative covers of Mississippi John Hurt's 'The Richland Woman Blues' and 'In Another Lifetime', siphoned from the ashes of Clifden festival, spread the net far beyond his own front gate.

Clarke's a child of the '50s with heroes plucked from the Gene Vincent/Eddie Cochrane era, a refreshing reminder of the shimmying heights scaled by the ones who came and went before the fireworks of the '60s. His imagery, though, was unmistakably the Americana of Diner and American Graffiti with stockcars, James Dean and amphetamines puncturing his biopics to a backdrop of McCullough's somnolent electric guitar.

Not given to standing on ceremony, Clarke wended his way through his back catalogue and left little out. The one reservation notable as the set progressed though was a growing tendency to eulogise Ireland and things Irish. Gladys Knight rightly wondered whether time has rewritten every line. Clarke, a romantic, has excavated the visceral impressions from his youth with few of the darker moments in place.

Still, he knows how to rattle the guitar so that it throws up a mean assortment of piquant chords that tweak at the braincells long after I've missed the last bus home. Camden St. looks a lot less menacing after dark with a plethora of his notes waltzing around in my skull.

• Siobhán Long