Originally
published in Skyscraper
I can’t imagine Clann Zú touring
with Kiss, though they did. They’d make more fitting tour
mates for Rage Against the Machine or even Midnight Oil. The Australian-Irish
band delve into rock, folk and electronica, and their music’s
far more message-oriented than any tripe Kiss ever served up.
“Rí Rá” for example
opens with violin, which is quickly accompanied by skittering
electronic drums as lead singer Declan de Barra incites an uprising.
“They don’t want you to think now, they don’t
want you to breath now,” he sings on “All That You’ve
Ever Known.” “They don’t want you speaking your
tongue.” But then the song breaks defiantly into a distinctly
Irish jig. “Everyday” covers a terrain of love and
loss familiar to Arab Strap. “All the People Now”
returns to a mellower, groovier tempo, at first mining a reggae
vein before bursting into straight-out rock.
De Barra often sings with an Irish
brogue that may annoy some who normally avoid more folky stuff.
Prompts me to think that a little Irish band called U2 must’ve
purged their sound of any ethnicity long before topping the charts.
Never mind, on Rua, Clann Zú let loose with some
honest passion sorely missing from U2’s last effort. On
one song in particular, “Lights Below,” I even heard
de Barra channel a little of the spirit of Bono himself.
Official
site
Robert Stribley
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