Loose talk

There have been few more genuinely bizarre sights in the history of Irish rock. It was three-quarters way through the second day of what had been a thoroughly enjoyable Oxegen festival. The new band tent was stuffed with close to two thousand fans, who were becoming increasingly animated, bodies gyrating in time to the rich groove of the music, arms punching the air in exultation, singing along as if they’d known these songs for years.
Onstage, Republic Of Loose were building towards the climax of their set. So far, they’d done everything right, frontman Johnny Pyro leading the band’s dark Irish soul review with a level of chutzpah and showmanship that is rare in musicians from this country. Now he was asking for something from the crowd. “Please,” he begged, almost tearfully, “are you going to come with me on this?” And he said it again, and again, and again, and again. “Please, please, please. Please, are you going to come with me on this?”
And then he revealed exactly what was on his mind. “I want everyone to get down on their knees,” he said, as the band punched out the rhythms behind him. The musicians, including the singer himself, led the way, kneeling down as if in prayer, and from that position Pyro raised his right hand and coaxed the crowd down, down, down – until just about everyone in the room was kneeling in front of him in supplication.
He let people get up momentarily and got them back down again, pleading, cajoling, doing the gospel shuffle, speaking in tongues, persuading them to go all the way with him on this. You might have seen something like it in a church – and Pyro has done it before in smaller venues – but this was a landmark for Irish rock, a local band getting an entire audience of two thousand people onto their knees in, well, a kind of adoration at least. It was positively surreal.
And then the band were on their feet, the crowd following them, blasting into the climax of ‘There Must Be Something In The Water’ – a mighty end to a powerhouse set that lit up Punchestown, and had the crowd in thrall.

It is too early to say if ROL will stick the course – but right now they are looking as if they might just have what it takes to get to the top of the game. In any event, their emergence into the Irish rock frontline has sparked the beginning of an interesting debate.
Matthew Magee writes well about rock’n’roll in the Sunday Tribune, and last week he interviewed Johnny Pyro. For the most part it was a positive piece, but there was a niggle in it, something that clearly bothered Magee himself and to which Johnny Pyro responded with customary lack of diplomacy.
You could boil it down to this question: to what extent is it essential – or does it make music more rooted and therefore better – for a songwriter to deal with stories, issues or ideas drawn from their own place? One criticism was explicit in the piece: that Pyro sounded American, and that the band’s style and licks and groove were lifted from American soul.
Which is largely true. But in a way all of that is to miss the point. The language of rock’n’roll is universal. So is the language of soul. While I’m all for giving things an Irish twist if that’s the way a songwriter’s imagination runs, no one can write a prescription for great music. Neither can you credibly say that it is impermissible for an Irish band to work in a genre or tradition, the roots of which are in American music. Where would that leave all of the great blues performers we’ve produced to take just one example?
It’s the paucity, up to now, of Irish bands capable of carrying a soul groove that makes ROL so fresh. In fact there is an argument not only that are Republic Of Loose a genuine Irish phenomenon, with their raw mixture of expletives and soul, but that their emergence says something telling about the way in which Irish society has evolved. Collectively, we had a way of keeping stuff in reserve. We tended to have an aversion to putting things on public display – and to people who let it all hang out in public.
Well, no more, or not to the extent that it proves stifling for artists who have chosen to mine that particular seam of artistic expression. The nature of the Republic Of Loose’s schtick involves getting down and dirty – literallly as well as metaphorically, as it happens, when it comes to a gig in a field like Oxegen. And doing it in public. Our mothers or our grandmothers might not have approved – but whatever downsides there might be to the new Ireland, one upside for sure is that we have the capacity to embrace the soul gene – and in the case of Johnny Pyro and the Republic Of Loose to write original material that has their neuroses, as well as their curiosity and their imagination, and more particularly that of Johnny Pyro, written all over it.
However ‘derivative’ it might be of the soul tradition, the music could belong to no one else – and in that sense it is as Irish and as free of Ireland as the band themselves.

The Republic Of Loose were just one measure, among many on display at Oxegen, of the current health of Irish music. I began Sunday morning catching a good glimpse of Saville on the second stage and they sounded smart and potent, fine songs bolstered by superb playing. On the main stage I heard the Saw Doctors doing ‘Clare Island’, a million miles from the urban oomph of Republic Of Loose, but a great Irish country or rural song nonetheless – one of many in the band’s repertoire – and they sounded just fine.
I watched all of Saucy Monky’s set, with Annmarie Cullen – from Terenure like Johnny Pyro – sharing lead singing and songwriting duties with Cynthia Catania from New Jersey, and after a brilliant performance, they ended up with an early afternoon crowd of about 500 in the Green Tent eating from the palms of their hands.
I saw Hothouse Flowers turn in a blistering performance, combining fine musicianship with soul of a kind that couldn’t have been further from the Pyro model if it tried. I saw Tychonaut smoulder, Turn turn it on and Ash burn, baby, burn. Left, right and centre there were good things to be seen from musicians representing all manner of different strands of the Irish rock pantheon.
At a time when there are lots of reasons to wonder about the state of the nation and the knots we are tying one another up in with the advent of new puritanism Irish-style, the weekend came like a welcome antidote. In the Republic of Rules, this was an occasion to forget about the straight jackets and to let it flow. And it did.
The republic felt just a bit looser and a lot more fun in Punchestown – and Irish music was an important part of it. Now, are you ready to get down on your knees again?