Night Horses

In their short career, Super Extra Bonus Party have come to represent everything that is good, bad and just plain bitchy about the Irish music scene. With 2007’s self-titled debut, the Kildare seven headed the queue of local artists injecting some much needed unpredictability, originality and thrill into a landscape full of anything but (rather neatly some contemporary rescuers R.S.A.G., Heathers and Fight Like Apes are among a throng to guest second time out). Then there was last year’s Choice Music Prize win and the message board bitching it caused in certain quarters. Even for a band as divisive as SEBP - for any newcomers, their wild eclecticism takes in hip-hop, rock, folk, electronica and pop - the naysayers seemed to nay a little too ridiculously… and don’t get us started on the band’s bizarre omission from the Irish Times list of the Best Irish Acts Right Now either. For the bad though, think about all the promotional posters, radio play and pre-release buzz you’ve encountered for Night Horses. No? Nothing? Really? Something is going mightily wrong then when a band win Ireland’s equivalent of the Mercury Prize - itself one of the finest means of promoting the country’s best music - and haven’t a bean or a serious body to support its follow up.

Mild rants aside, the greatest pity in the last statement is that Nigh Horses is, on the whole, a triumph. Having played the ‘where did that come from’ card successfully last time out, album number two provides a cohesive step forward - a refined successor to a debut brimming with raw potential. For one, keeping nine guests in check over 13 songs is no mean feat, never mind the fact that the best is got from each one. From the unlikeliest (and subsequently best) collaboration - with Dublin siblings Heathers (’Comets’) - to the bigger hitting cameos from Cadence Weapon (’Radar‘) and Mr Lif (’Thin Air’), the Boners deft production ensures a relative seamless flow throughout. Chaos may have been traded in for control, but lest us not forget this is a band who wield hurleys on stage during furious live sets so there’s still fun for having. The White Noise/Captain Moonlight assisted ’Tea With Lord Haw Haw’ is riotously entertaining while you’re unlikely to find too many tracks titled as amusingly as instrumental closers ‘Mark Hughes Top Corner’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Cricket Disco’ either.

There’s more than a hint of The Go Team on the concluding pair, and the slower, ’Huddle Formation’ like tracks do stall things a little - the change of pace from ’Tea With Lord Haw Haw’ to ‘Sondra’, like the guest shrieking from Fight Like Apes MayKay on ‘Eamon’, provide the album’s only missteps. Yet the utterly sensational title-track and tongue-in-cheekily titled opener ‘Super Team Go’ show they can easily be the equal of the like-minded Brighton gang. In fact, a supremely strong record, Night Horses proves Super Extra Bonus Party are more than a match for anything across the Irish Sea. And that’s what awaits - a challenge that may well yield some proper independent scene backing and a little less bitching. On current evidence, boy are they ready for it.