Blonde bombshell

Heads turned in confusion as midway through their set Faye O’Rourke and Adam O’Regan descended from the stage to stand amongst the few hundred strong crowd in Cavan’s Townhall Arts Centre on Saturday night, writes Damian McCarney.

With an acoustic guitar slung over her shoulder, the Soda Blonde frontwoman introduced a song she penned when her mother was in ICU, saying she wanted others who had experienced such trauma or loss to know they weren’t alone. There followed a beautiful tender of ‘An Accident’ with Adam providing gorgeous harmonies.

The authenticity with which Faye delivered the powerful song prevented it from becoming mawkish, and soon there was more than a few tears shed amongst the crowd encircling the pair. It was a sombre counterpoint to an otherwise electrifying night.

She had already ingratiated her with the audience.

“Cavan is a particularly special place to us because it’s where a large part of our first album was conceived. We were all living together in James’ family home in Crosskeys,” she said of their stand in bassist James Smith. “It’s a spiritual place for us!”

This was a truly electric show from one of Ireland’s finest indie acts.

Chief in establishing the four-piece in that lofty position is the mesmerising stage presence of Faye. How she dresses, how she holds herself, how she jolts into a spasm of a robotic dance before composing herself leaving you to wonder did that just happen, how she confronts the audience with a Johnny Rotten stare before dazzling us with a 100watt smile, and most of all how she delivers those amazing songs in her amazing voice. Faye is a national treasure in waiting. Though I doubt she cares about such matters. She’s herself.

Musical highlights include the wonderfully abrasive ‘Bad Machine’, their concert-closer ‘Midnight Show’ and the Fleetwood Mac-esque ‘Things we say in the heat of the night’ which she proudly introduced as “one we wrote in Crosskeys!”