The Sugar Club

As the tagline of Guy Maddin's 2007 'docu-fantasia' masterpiece, My Winnepeg, proclaims: "The truth is relative". This is the message being broadcast this evening by Luke Haines – former lynchpin of both The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, and perennial misfit of British (anti-)pop – in unison with much-loved Dubliner Cathal Coughlan, the driving force behind oft-missed local heroes Microdisney and The Fatima Mansions. Having been introduced to one another by journalist Andrew Mueller, the pair decided recently to form "a modern rock combo", taking their thematic cue from a mythical collection of holy manuscripts known as The North Sea Scrolls.

Upon arriving at Leeson Street's thronged Sugar Club, we are greeted by a startling image looming from the screen at the back of the venue's stage: it's a picture of one Jimmy Saville (recently deceased, of course), as well as former boxer Frank Bruno and a shell suit-wearing Peter Sutcliffe (aka The Yorkshire Ripper). The latter two are shaking hands in what must surely rank as one of the oddest pictures you're ever likely to see. As we rub our eyes in confusion, the potential meanings behind the image start to get under our skin, and what first appeared innocuous slowly takes on a more sinister tone. As we discover across the course of tonight's gig, this exposing of the mundane as the downright strange and unsettling is the very essence of The North Sea Scrolls.

The show was originally written for and performed at last summer's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Having drawn rapturous responses from audiences and critics alike, it was then decided that TNSS should be brought out on the road proper; fast-forward a few months, and this Sugar Club performance follows a similarly 'revelatory' outing at Cork's Triskel Arts Centre the previous night.

The whole set effectively works as one complete piece, with overlapping themes building from one song to the next before it all unfurls rapturously at the end in one big sonic hug. As for the songs themselves... Well, quite a lot has been crammed into the fourteen bruisers that constitute the bricks and mortar of the show. Pop culture clashes semi-chaotically with the past throughout to tell us how things actually were. No, really.

From 'Broadmoor Blues Delta' to 'Mr Cynthia', it soon becomes clear that this is a history not created by the fevered minds of conspiracy theorists, but rather one that laughs in their faces. Heck, if you're going to rewrite history, then why not have some fun doing it - right?

The aforementioned 'Broadmoor...', sung by Haines (the pair alternate vocal duties all night), tells of how, having been certified cracked at the infamous psychiatric hospital, failed kidnapper Ian Ball was subsequently approached by none other than Beelzebub himself. This blinged Northern Lucifer (Jimmy Saville R.I.P.) somehow managed to 'fix it' for Ball to trade places with his namesake in the indie band Gomez. The song's refrain of "Gomez, Gomez..." draws a wryly satisfied laugh from the attentive audience.

Coughlan's 'Mr Cynthia', meanwhile, apparently alludes to how Sir Oswald Mosley ruled Britain during the '60s, and recounts how his Minister of Culture, Sir Joseph Meek, placed John Lennon under house arrest for fear that the star's progressive views on politics and the world in general could have a damaging influence on Britain's impressionable yougsters. In the absense of our cultural hero, it was his first wife Cynthia who went on to become a celebrated modern thinker.

These are the mere beginnings of the twisted and often hilarious tales that have been set loose by The Scrolls. The song 'My Mother, My Dead Mother' is seemingly about the last Royal Wedding - only, in this barbed version of history, William is in fact marrying his own dead mother, Diana. History101 this ain't.

There's even a mention tonight for the master of Irish conspiracy theories himself, Jim Corr (guitarist in The Corrs), and it's quite apt that this dwarf of the mind should be shown up here. Joining paranoia king Jim are the crime king Martin Cahill and even the prog-metal band Hawkwind, who are seen at one point transporting The Scrolls from Ladbroke Grove to Norfolk in a hot air balloon.

Each number receives its own spoken-word intro from Mueller, a device that not only proves laugh-out-loud funny on several occasions, but also serves as an interesting way of informing first-time listeners about the ribald subject matter on display.

Musically speaking, the songs are unmistakeably the work of the two main performers, but this union has upped the playfulness quotient considerably. As with much of his recent solo output, some of Haines' work here could (almost) pass for stand-up comedy.

Other highlights include 'The Angel of The North' and a song that could/should be called 'I'm Falconetti', concerning as it does the death of popular radio DJ Chris Evans. The ubiquitous jock actually gets burned at the stake, his dying vision being that he has somehow come to inhabit the body of iconic actress Maria Falconetti (from Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc). Perhaps surprisingly, in this version of living Evans is depicted as being a fairly wise figure... Perish the thought!

The performances given this evening are universally excellent, with pathos-ridden cello accompaniment coming from Audrey Riley. A rousing singalong brings the North Sea Scrolls experience to a close, with lyrics projected onto the screen behind the band. We're then treated to a Coughlan classic in the shape of 'Singer's Hampstead Home' (from his Microdisney days) as well as an equally wonderful brace of Haines' own making: the inimitable 'Leeds United' along with 'Georgous George', a typically madcap missive from his latest LP, 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of The 1970s & Early '80s.

Given the conspiracy-soaked post 9/11 climate we now live under, where rain cannot fall without The Mossad's hand being seen behind it, tonight serves as a timely reminder that, if anything, what most of these New World Order theories lack is a dose of imagination. Jim Corr could do worse than ask Messrs. Haines and Coughlan for advice the next time he wants to get on the telly. The North Sea Scrolls certainly beats a night with the Corrs hands down.

Go here to view a gallery of Colm Kelly's photos from the gig, and here to read our recent in-depth interview with Luke Haines.

"It's just me this year… It's the austerity tour!" Neil Hannon tells Ragged Words with a giggle a few hours before taking the stage at Dublin's Sugar Club. Tonight is one of a handful of shows that will see the thirty-nine year-old roadtesting songs from The Divine Comedy’s tenth studio album, Bang Goes The Knighthood, which will be hitting shelves at the end of this month. Hannon, with only a piano and glass of red wine for company, says the stripped-back setup reminds him of some of his favourite artists ("I've always wanted to be Cole Porter"), and it's a natural step that most Divine Comedy fans will surely have always been anticipating. What’s more, kicking the tour off in the intimate, comfy surroundings of The Sugar Club is nothing short of a gift for fans in Hannon's adopted hometown. And just to make us wet the plush cinema seats a little more, he's brought all the hits along tonight. 

It's an utterly brilliant set, with impossible-to-find debut mini-album Fanfare For The Comic Muse and über-fan favourite Regeneration the only Divine Comedy albums not featured in tonight. New songs are, of course, deftly teased in, with 'The Complete Banker' – a typically witty lampooning of the financial community – and the bouncy, Georgian architecture-inspired (this is Hannon after all) 'Assume The Perpendicular' going down particularly well. He begins with the new album's opener 'Down In The Street Below', and this writer – whose concert-going began with The Divine Comedy some 12 years ago – can confidently say it's among the best numbers Hannon's ever written. Much of the rest of that personal list - 'Tonight We Fly', 'Our Mutual Friend', 'A Drinking Song', 'If', 'Something For The Weekend' - also gets an airing tonight. It was perhaps too much to expect 'Through A Long And Sleepless Night' as well, but there are plenty of other back catalogue gems to compensate. Hannon easily convinces the audience to participate on 'The Frog Princess', and we need no encouragement to join in on 'National Express' and 'Songs Of Love'. Aided by the miming/backing vocals of Thomas 'Duckworth' Walsh, the Derryman then has us in stitches for the duration of the pair's 'Jiggery Pokery'. 

Crowd-pleasers aside, though, are the new songs any good? Well, yes; they certainly are. Ragged Words is currently digesting a promo copy of Bang Goes The Knighthood, and while it may be a very good Divine Comedy album, and not (yet at least) a great one, the seven songs premiered tonight don't let the standard slip once. In fact, 'Can You Stand Upon One Leg?', a song that's perhaps a little too silly on record, sounds far more at home played live. 'Have You Ever Been In Love?' and 'I Like', two sickeningly loved-up songs, are the real highlights, though, as far as we're concerned. They're so goddamned lovely that Cathy Davey, the other half of Dublin's premiere indie couple, tonight sits head-in-hands, unable to watch. What else can she really be expected to do when one of this generation's best songwriters has penned lines like “Have you ever figured out the meaning of life / just by looking into someone else’s eyes?” just for her.

As was pointed out elsewhere, the last time Adrian Crowley launched an album, he was suffering the effects of a cold Winter’s Sunday night in front of a crowd of around 30 people. Less than eighteen months on, there’s a noticeable stretch in the evenings and an even clearer spring in the Galway native’s step. The Sugar Club is also comfortably full of those who, in the intervening period, fell for the quiet magic of 2007’s Long Distance Swimmer and they prove a more than open audience for a night dominated by its imminent follow up Season Of The Sparks. Indeed by the time Crowley’s finishes up a second encore - giddily bemused by the wolf whistles - he warns of a 75-song back catalogue that could keep us here all night.

Having toured with violinist Emma Smith and viola player Vince Siprell (now collectively Geese) for the Long Distance Swimmer shows, Crowley has since  been slowly adopting members of fellow Dublin-based band Halfset to the point that three of its complement of four provide tonight’s backing. Among them is Stephen Shannon, who, as well as producing Crowley’s most recent work, oversaw the debut EP of tonight’s support Norabelle. The Dublin/Louth pair’s hushed acoustics are nice, if a little limited. It’s hardly surprising, at a MySpace glance, that Mark Kozelek is such an influence as Norabelle tread a very similar line of trying to keep very long, minimally played songs engaging. It all means that the set’s most entertaining moment arrives when a friend enquires during ’Lenin’ whether the song is indeed about Vladimir Lenin, only for Ken Clarke to immediately sing the next line of looking deep into someone’s eyes… Then again that kind of inadvertent, perfectly timed comedy would overshadow most performances, so we’re not dismissing the still-pretty-sweet Norabelle just yet.

Adrian Crowley can keep things minimal with the best of ’em but for tonight’s fleshed out set, there isn’t a disinterested punter plonked in any of the room’s plush seats. He starts, unfamiliarly, behind a keyboard for album opener Summer Haze Parade but is soon joined by drums, keys and second guitar. The move away from stringed accompaniment adds a different dimension, and only once to its detriment with The Wishing Seat not quite hitting the heights of its recording. Oh and those heights by the way provide one of the year’s best songs. Elsewhere, Jeff Martin’s extra guitar adds a chilling edge to Swedish Room and the four really get motoring on the new album’s title track and Photographing Lightning Strikes - the only pre-2007 song included. On his own too - whether covering Ivor Cutler and Daniel Johnson or delving back into the still sublime Long Distance Swimmer - Crowley remains a hugely engaging and rewarding performer, befitting his status as one of the country’s very best artists.

Hell, he could have easily have exhausted all 75 of those back catalogue songs too.