The Strypes Pull Off A Christmas Cracker In Whelan's

I’ve reviewed The Strypes on three separate occasions this year – a gig in the Thomas House, their show at the Electric Picnic, and supporting Liam Gallagher in Lucan – as well as offering a few paragraphs about their very good indeed third album Spitting Image – my “Cavan A Rave-Up” pun was one of the year’s best, and was cruelly ignored at the recent Irish Magazine Awards. With this in mind, I need to be careful to avoid cliché and repetition, so here are a few standard riffs I need to steer around:

1. Their enviable youth
2. Cavan
3. Dr. Feelgood /Wilko Johnson
4. The Blues
5. Elton John, Paul Weller, and all their other celebrity champions

Published in 1939, Gadsby is a novel concerning the fall and rise of the fictional city of Branton Hills. The main selling point of Ernest Vincent Wright’s book is the fact that it does not contain the letter “e”. At all. It must have driven the author half crazy. I feel his pain. I haven’t a hope.

Promptly, as the clock strikes nine, the lights go down, the P.A. plays a combination of the old Outer Limits theme tune (“We are controlling transmission”), The Who’s ‘The Ox’, and Ivor Cutler’s Small Faces narrations, and then, like greyhounds out of traps, The Strypes bound onto a stage decorated like an explosion in Dealz, and into ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’. Better known as a Muddy Waters record, the song was originally recorded all the way back in 1929 by the magnificently named Hambone Willie Newbern. Yes, it is the type of music I’ve sworn not to refer to, but it’s had a welcome cracker stuck up its arse. ‘Eighty Four’, from second album Little Victories, shakes the floor and we’re asked, unnecessarily, if we’re “up for it”, before ‘Cruel Brunette’ lays out the manifesto “Sad songs and waltzes are useless to me now”. Good, because that’s not what the crowd are here for. ‘(I Need A Break From) Holidays’ and ‘Black Shades Over Red Eyes’ are like a harder version of Elvis Costello & The Attractions, and ‘Hometown Girls’ kicks off at an almost trash metal clip, the band nearly passing themselves out a few times.

‘Freckle and Burn’, from the recent Almost True EP, breaks down into a cousin of The Who’s ‘Who Are You’ crossed with a riff that could have been lifted from Horslips’ Book Of Invasions, and things keep rattling through ‘Easy Riding’ and ‘Grin And Bear It’. One minute they’re channelling The Jeff Beck Group and quoting The Beatles, the next they’re tight as my jeans after the Christmas dinner, employing full dynamic range on ‘Mystery Man’ and ‘What A Shame’ I must again take my hat off to ‘Great Expectations’, a song that deservedly finished high on the Hot Press tracks of the year list. It’s introduced with Thin Lizzy’s ‘Cowboy Song’ riff but it’s closer to ‘Angel From The Coast’ or ‘Romeo And The Lonely Girl’. It could slip into the track list of Jailbreak and you wouldn’t be able to feel the bump and you can’t say fairer than that.

Although they’re all heroes, I want to single out bass player Peter O’Hanlon, who is fast becoming my favourite Irish rock star, but perhaps we should really take pity on him. It’s obvious that he’s suffering from a bad case of dystonia, that extreme form of the boogie-woogie flu of old. He is incapable of standing still, and there are times when you worry he’s going to shake himself apart. He laughs at himself for his unfortunate choice of woolly Christmas tank top, which leaves him sweating like a Hollywood exec checking the morning papers, and hands out the fake snowballs, paper cannons, and crackers to the crowd, which makes for a spectacular ending to ‘Scumbag City Blues’, a riot of colour and noise. He does all this while playing bass that veers from rockin’ to funky at the drop of a hat, just check the furious opening to ‘Get Into It’. With the greatest of respect to Ross Farrelly, who gets better every time I see him, O’Hanlon is the de facto frontman tonight. If all that wasn’t enough, he walks on for the encore carrying a life size cut out of Noddy Holder!

All encores should begin like this, with an arse-kicking medley of Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ and ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’. Why, it’s a Christmas miracle! Hot Press – there’s something in my eye - is so moved, we almost throw a half crown out the window to a local waif to buy that big turkey for the Cratchits. Nick Lowe’s ‘Heart Of The City’ and ‘Blue Collar Jane’ close things out, complete with a drum solo from the machine that is Evan Walsh, and Josh McClorey playing the guitar behind his back, just because he can.

If a gang of “more mature” rock fans put together their dream band in a lab, they’d probably come up with something close to The Strypes – 60’s beat bands, Lizzy, New Wave, etc. – but that is to limit their appeal. There’s plenty of people here tonight whose knees didn’t creak when we were told to crouch down to the floor. A great show, from a really great band, we should all be looking forward to seeing what they do next.