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The Olllam

Venue: Barry's
Town: Grange, Co. Sligo
Date: 30/7/14
Website: http://theolllam.com

It is, I'll grant you, a funny way to do a gig. Walk on stage, not a word to the audience, no intros to tunes or band until after the first encore. It kept us focussed on the music, that's for sure!Irish music is undergoing something of a welcome renaissance at the moment, with bands like The Gloaming, Slide and others ripping up the rulebook and doing it their way. The Olllam belong here too.

Ambling on stage to a pretty full house, they settled, and began. A light dusting of keyboards from Woody Goss began the motif, picked up by Limerickman Sean O'Meara on guitar, as, gradually, the twin low whistles of Tyler Duncan and John McSherry developed the melody, and moved it along. It was evident from this point that we were dealing with a musical behemoth, whose approach owes much to genres such as rock and jazz, Michael Shimmin's drums and percussion, coupled with Joe Dart's innovative bass work pushing and stretching the tunes in all directions, but the centre -Duncan and McSherry -through unison and harmony play-holding the melody.

This is remarkable music, of which the virtuosity of the musicians is but a part. Chances are taken with rhythms, melody lines, and arrangements, sometimes to bewildering effect. Three tunes in, guitar, whistles, bass and cowbell begin a funky reel, picked up by the pipes. Woody Goss's piano almost takes flight at this point, but twin pipes anchor rhythm and melody before the piece comes in for to land! Moments like this happen routinely throughout the evening, and pins could be heard dropping, such was the focus of the audience on the onstage dynamics.

All too soon, it was done and dusted, at which point Tyler Duncan thanked us for coming, and the band tore into the second encore, a set of tunes from Asturias which I had heard John McSherry play somewhere before. The Olllam , on this evidence, are a band for the long haul, whose muse has even more to it than was suggested tonight. Stunning stuff, and no mistake.

Oliver P. Sweeney.