The Harvest Ministers

The Harvest Ministers: (Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin)

It is to their credit that The Harvest Ministers are, in some ways, quite a different prospect live to their recently released debut album Little Dark Mansion. In the flesh what you get is a more eclectic extrapolation on the themes of their current album. This healthy variance is not due, though, to experimentation with and alteration of the structure of the studio version of their tunes, which is a pity, because they certainly seem capable of pulling off a variety of interpretations of their own material.

Nevertheless, due to the vast repertoire of very good original songs of diverse genres which they have already accumulated, and which, for purely logistical reasons, it would have been impossible to include on an LP. without seriously threatening the definition of that particular musical entity, it is impossible to judge The Harvest Ministers merely by any single one of their offerings on disc. You simply have to experience them in concert as well.

What you also don’t get on any record is William Merriman informing you that the beautifully elegiac ‘Six O’ Clock Is Rosary’ is about friendship, nor witness the diminutive main man get in a muddle when trying to explain the narrative sequence of his ‘River Wedding’ trilogy and see him being gallantly rescued from this verbal entanglement of his own making by his vocal partner, the corn goddess herself (!?), Gerardette Bailey.

‘Tampered With’ and ‘Cleaning Up The Store’, two tracks which received the ‘phonographic’ chop, jive things up a good deal more than you might expect and ‘It’s Hard To Be A Saint’ displays the ironic and self deprecating humour of Mr Merriman, surely one of the most credible torch balladeers around these shores at present, who proves that you don’t have to be grave in order to be serious.

Like others dear to me before them William Merriman’s assorted band of accomplished musicians and singers often thread a thin live wire between a kind of shambolic presentation, which might be mistakenly construed as ordinary amateurism, and that fluid and flexible yet disjointed performance which exemplifies the extraordinary and courageous search for new forms of expression and new styles of articulation.

That The Harvest Ministers topple into the latter category rather than the former says more for them than a litany of sermons on slick but crass professionalism.

• Patrick Brennan