Photo: Aila Harryson-Lorrigan
The Claque are Dublin-based trio Alan Duggan, Kate Brady and Paddy Ormond, on the 7th of March they released their debut single 'Hush' with B-Side 'Stray', although all three are no strangers to the Irish music landscape repsectively. Forming in 2017, Duggan, Brady and Ormond sought to amalgamate their individual tastes and backgrounds, with the end goal of producing a sound that was both challenging and catchy.
The other night whilst doing the standard weekly chasing my tail I came upon The Claque, one click, into Spotify, and 'Hush' (then 'Stray'). Within 15 seconds the point blank mechanical trundle and sharpness of the drum beat and raking electronic sounds translated into a slow gasp of "O....K....", a rattling vibration I don't think I've felt since I first heard The Faint's abrasive and aurally intrusive Danse Macabre in 2001. Straining to hear the vocal lost underneath this cacophony, it surfaces briefly at 1:30; "Something new, gets you talking...". From that point the vocal absorbs into the ratcheting grate of nails on blackboard that fuzzes incessantly towards an ear-bleeding conclusion. This is all my Beth Orton's Portishead, Death in Vegas, Massive Attack and Sneaker Pimps' Kelli Ali rolled into one, not just vocally, but musically too, can't handle.
B-Side 'Stray' is like the next episode of your new favourite TV show served up straight away after a cliff-hanger ending. A minimal drop in sonic rust ensues, but the track is equally captivating and all-encompassing, the percussion again is sick as fuck, if you like it you love it, if you don't well...it's done now. Brady's vocal is the balm to the mania that shudders all around, it fills every square millimetre like an out of control fire ripping through a building. That thudding bass-drum that breaks the bpm record at 2:11 is also one of the wonderful subtleties that characterise these two tracks. Everything is great right now in Irish music, it has been for a while, but it needed The Claque, and here they are.
The Claque play The Iveagh Gardens on the 11th of July with IDLES and All Together Now in Wexford on the August Bank Holiday weekend.
