There’s a buzz going around the Village tonight. New York’s latest great white hopes The Rapture are in town to play their first Irish show, and the sell-out crowd is a mix of those already well acquainted with the house of echoes that is their debut and those curious to see if there’s more to them than the ‘disco-Strokes’ tag they’ve been lumped with in some quarters.
The cacophony of noise that greets us as we trawl in certainly has something undeniably Noo Yawk about it, but it comes courtesy of Dublin’s own The Things, a band who’ve been doing their best to claim this town as their own of late. They serve up their fierce glam garage like it’s going out of fashion (which given the way these things go…), and songs like ‘She’s Trash’ and ‘Tiger’ are gloriously unpolished nuggets with edges jagged enough to poke your eye out, if the singer’s flailing mic doesn’t do so first. Most definitely ones to watch.
The reception the headliners get when they arrive onstage suggests the crowd are more than ready to get the party started, but after opening with the slow introspection of ‘Infatuation’ it takes the band a while to warm up. For all the talk of their dance-rock fusion, live they initially seem more comfortable with their angst-ridden romantic side, highlighted by the excellent ‘Love is All’. And when they do step behind the keyboards and programmed beats, at times the fusion with Luke Jenner’s sparse guitar and yelped vocals seem a little awkward and doesn’t quite meld. You start to think that just because they have a saxophonist who indulges in some sub-Bez dancing and likes to bang on a cowbell doesn’t make them ‘dance’.
But it’s clear from the beginning that rather than act the cool poseurs these guys are willing to work for their audience’s attention. They get the crowd to sing along to ‘Open Up Your Heart’ (Jenner jumps in himself at one stage), and this enthusiasm pays off big time when they eventually really start to get the groove on. The opening hoot of sax that announces the arrival of the shit-hot ‘Sister Saviour’ launches the gig into a momentum that continues to accelerate until ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ arrives just when you want it to. They play it like the bone fide punk-funk classic that it is, and the applause is, well, rapturous. And by the time they encore with the crazy excellence of ‘Echoes’ and, er, a cover of Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock’n’Roll Part 2’ (honestly), it’s game, set and match.