The great thing about festivals is catching bands you’ve never come across before, and I hit the jackpot when a friend recommended Irish band Gurriers, who played an incendiary early afternoon set in sweltering heat at the Beautiful Days festival this summer. So I was happy to see the band announced for The Globe in Cardiff – a perfect venue to see a band clearly on an upward trajectory.
Early doors and no support sees the band on stage at 8pm on a school night, and us in the audience home at a civilised time. Gurriers – whose name is the approximate Irish slang equivalent of ‘chavs’ – certainly look like a gang you wouldn’t want to mess with. Drummer Pierce Callaghan wears shades throughout but remains on point, Ben O’Neill and Mark MacCormack provide the abrasive edge on guitars, kilt-wearing bassist Charlie McCarthy is the heartbeat and lead singer Damien Hoff paces the stage with an intensity I last saw from another Irish rocker, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C.
Any band that walks onstage to a Sergio Leone theme is OK by me (I recall The Clash doing it decades before) and, with the Globe packed and expectant, the band open with the opening title track from new album Nobody’s Coming To Save You.
The band’s present mission has clearly benefitted from an intense period on the road, and they play with an intoxicating mix of light and shade: one minute reflective, then Hoff will shout, “Are you with us Cardiff?” and all hell breaks loose, with the liveliest moshpit I’ve seen in years. With no crowd barrier in place, it was every man and woman for themselves – I certainly took a few digs in my ribs for my trouble. Later Hoff will jump into the audience, the crowd parting like the Red Sea before dancing like crazy round him as he scrambles back onstage.
At their best an exhilarating live presence, Gurriers are a band who will be hard to ignore in the near future; when they return to Cardiff, it will no doubt be at a much bigger venue.
Gurriers, The Globe, Cardiff, Tue 29 Sept
words and photos PAUL WINDSOR
