On a dreary Sunday in the middle of a fairly bogging summer – which feels hard to complain about when people elsewhere on this planet are suffering in infernal temperatures – my partner asked if I wanted to go to see Dympna in the Sunflower. I’d meant to go anyway but I had forgotten it was on. It’s handy to have someone around who remembers these things, or rather someone who is passionate about using Google calendar.
Dympna is the new project of Muckno (Jamie Bishop from Monaghan) and Róis (Rose Connolly from Fermanagh), two impressive musicians in their own right, so I knew that this would be a debut well worth attending.
Due to an unfortunate mishap with a Casio watch that had not been changed to reflect daylight savings time, we only managed to catch the last two songs of Mr Garagely (Robert Nettleship)’s support slot. I was very impressed by Mr Garagely’s frenetic, virtuosic drumming, continuing deftly with one hand after dropping a drumstick.
Dympna took to the stage in co-ordinating pinstriped suits, which communicated to the audience that they were in professional hands. The set began with colourful visuals and audio from the 1997 film The Butcher Boy, when Francie Brady, (a fellow border town native) talks to an apparition of the Virgin Mary, portrayed by the recently departed Sinéad O’Connor. After this introduction, the pair launched into a tight performance that called Aphex Twin, Four Tet and Radiohead to mind, while also incorporating elements of traditional music and remaining entirely their own thing. Between the two of them, they played keys, bouzouki, fiddle, Organelle, bass and drum machine to create textured soundscapes.
The star of the show were Róis’ transcendent vocals, which soared and tied the performance together. The refrain of “I never/You always” will be bouncing around my head for days. I did slightly regret not taking the time to take my hearing protection as I left the house in haste, due to the aforementioned watch incident, as it did get quite loud in the back half of the set, the visuals intensifying to reflect this acceleration. The evening came to a close with the increasingly warped and wonky voice of Frank Sinatra and then we started where we finished, with The Butcher Boy.
With Monday morning looming over us, we’d planned to make a fairly swift exit but were foiled by several lovely people we got chatting to on the way out. Those lovely people, the gorgeous trad session downstairs and of course, the gig upstairs lifted my heart on a dreary Sunday evening. A friend I was chatting to who had been equally impressed by Dympna’s set remarked that there was an appetite for this kind of music, that he could think of ten people off the top of his head who he felt were sure to be Dympna fans. I agreed, throughout the performance, I kept thinking how excited I was to tell my brother about it.
I think that’s a sure sign of good art, that you’re eager to share it. I suppose that’s why I wanted to write this review.
