Artist: Crayonsmith
Source: Naomi McArdle
Whelans on a Friday at 930 p.m is enough to strike simultaneous joy and dread into the heart of a seasoned gig-goer: weekend shows often pack to the rafters. On the flip side are midweek nights when modest audiences congregate around the dark edges, leaving a harsh-lit horseshoe of empty floorboards. On this occasion the balance was just right with a decent crowd clustered around the stage, anxious not to skip a beat. As it was, I'd missed support acts GiveAManAKick and Dublin Duck Dispensary. Oops.
Musical metaphor The Boat had just begun on my arrival, flowing vocals sounding really clear from the Whelans stacks, despite some chat from the audience, followed by Lost In The Forest, a stormer from White Wonder, which appears to be Crayonsmith's key song and with good reason, displaying a real handle on bass and sample-simplicity to lead the way for synths that rush in like adrenaline lessening a fear.
In fact, there's a darker tinge to Crayonsmiths' songs live, picked out and delivered in deliberate order, especially looking at the setlist: Devil's Island, We Sleep, The Boat, Lost In The Forest, Banshee, All The Elders, Dolphins, Epitaph, Scarytale and Alegre.
I only knew some of the names from that rather mixed list, the band were obviously reluctant to rest on too many old favourites. The omission of Anxious came as a suprise but it was made up for by All The Elders's old-fashioned touch of Americana in honest-to-goodness guitars, standing surprisingly strong amidst a set which had already skimmed the tops off a load of other genres.
I should butt in here to mention that Crayonsmith, in case you don't know, began with Ciaran Smith's 2006 debut Stay Loose, his experiments in Lo-Fi later completed by Ruadhan O' Meara on bass and Ronan Jackson on additional guitar, synth and drum-punching duties, which led to a second album White Wonder in 2008. To date their achievements encompass multi-date tours in the UK and US with Sparklehorse and Islands, prime supports to Why?, Juana Molina and more recently, Max Tundra, not to mention the 'Experimental Irish Indie Done Well' tag. The Dublin trio share those artists' imaginative streak, cultivating a hybrid of noisy rock instruments cross-matched with synthetic samples. Crayonsmith shouldn't be Irish, they should be from Kansas or Oz or wherever in-between it is where brick after yellow brick of sound lays down a rolling road. We should be very glad they're Irish.
Vocals play such an important role in most of the songs, a balance is struck to ensure the rhythms don't overpower the voice and harmonies chime in with quartz precision. You'd expect a touch of messiness as these sounds are pinned together, though of a different style Why? as an example are messier but both bands share a love for the ever-changing song format, the careful layering of nuances and inflections.
Returning from stronger use of samples in Epitaph, the re-uptake quickly lead on to Scarytale from Stay Loose, the second last song, we were told. Oh dear, I thought, over so soon? I hadn't seen them perform live since the IMRO Showcase Tour last April when sound problems marred their set and I walked out thinking they weren't really suited for talent shows. I was right: Crayonsmith are best seen on their own terms, in their own sweet time.
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