All photos: Remy Connolly
On Thursday night just gone, Dundalk native (currently Cork-based) Trick Mist took his debut album tour for LP Both Ends to The Bello Bar in Dublin with support from fellow artistes from The Town, Elephant and VIDEO BLUE. The trio have been touring the U.K. and Ireland together for the past few weeks, taking in shows in Manchester where Gavin Murray (Trick Mist) lived for a number of years and London where Jim O'Donoghue Martin (VIDEO BLUE) has resided for the last number of years.
I'd been looking forward to Thursday's show for quite some time, Both Ends was / is an album that I am still coming to grips with, intricate, odd, multi-layered, and highly unique and experimental, I always enjoy these journeys, the ones that don't end after a mere month or two. It was also another chance to hear Elephant's 88 album live among other songs from his debut 2015 LP Hypergiant, and a fourth time seeing the happiness-generating VIDEO BLUE, who I last saw at the same venue back in April 2017.
A cold night, pissy rain, wind, ideal for slipping into the subterranean level of The Bello Bar below The Lower Deck pub in Portobello, one of my favourite live music venues in Dublin, it's always chill. It was also the first time I'd been in a room with four Shane's, a Shane on the door, a Shane on the merch table, and two Shane's on stage (Elephant), lol.
VIDEO BLUE got us going with his individualistic celebration of indie / electro pop, and a hearty dose of top notch humour, one track he performed had a very tropical pop sound, with cruise ship liner 80's beats, during the intro of which he remarked; "This one is a bit like karaoke, expensive karaoke", a barb at us purchasing tickets for karaoke. There's a sleight of hand that runs through his music, a dancing merriment that is tempered with an acknowledgement of some level of inner-sadness we all experience, but don't confront, only observable live in the most fleeting of facial expressions when singing his lyrics.
Elephant provided an alternate version of 88 on the night, minus full band, the set was a slowed down collection of the album and earlier tracks. At one point in between songs he paused and brought our attention to the merchandise table at the back of the venue, advising that there were copies of Trick Mist's album available for purchase on vinyl, but also his album, which he noted "was better".
Elephant finished his set with an outrageously gorgeous rendition of the final track on his last album 'All These Dragons', a powerful reflection of not living your best life, crippling inhibition and a sense of being withdrawn from yourself, by yourself; "You’re the good and bad in battle // I’m the gravel on a new grave // Yet, your light's so fucking fragile // We just sit and stand and behave // You’re afraid of all these dragons // I’m afraid of never living". I heard them on the night, and I connected, but right now, I'm very glad he's included the lyrics on his Bandcamp page.
Highlights from Trick Mist's performance were many, to be descriptively dull, they were distinct moments. Album opener 'Magic Dust' haunts and trickles down the spine like icy water; "We don't believe in god anymore, but we said a prayer for you last night", fatalistic, and what it meant to me was a duality between the abandonment of the worst parts of the past, but also an acknowledgement of tradition. And tradition is something that courses through Trick Mist's veins, a hypnotic and desolate nowhere in between the past and the present.
On stage he may as well be behind a curtain, in another world, a séance with the audience residing in the real world, but slowly being drawn into his parallel habitat by the end of the set. Captured perfectly in two songs, The baritone central of 'Two Doors Down', no music required, sans instrumentation, and a strikingly similar live rendition to the recorded studio equivalent. Then, the drowning beauty of 'Tampering Happy', your mind sinking slowly down to the lake bed of your consciousness. Dramatic? I suppose, but an observable experience.
That is one thing that really struck me fully for the first time on Thursday night, Murray's insatiable appetite for observation, something that was hinted at when I reviewed Both Ends last year, but didn't click with me until the other night. It feels like whether he wants to or not, every lived experience, from the seemingly mundane, to the once in a lifetime (trip to rural India), transcribes its indelible mark on him.
He doesn't ask or look out for these experiences, they almost seek and find him, track 'Snatch' is a good example, I imagine a solo wander around England's capital city, the din of everyday life all around, it's busy, maybe a bit chaotic, but the eyes and mind land on; "Red roses in an East London garden, sporadic thoughts, landing on anniversaries". A momentary sense of being alone, and in awe of a simple image, converted into poetry, a mental desert in a metropolis trying to breathe on its own terms. I imagine those roses in that East London garden crying out for someone to see them, really see them, for the first time, someone did, and they wrote a song about it.
Listen to more Trick Mist, Elephant and VIDEO BLUE below;
