GHOST OF AN AMERICAN AIRMAN (Rock Garden, Dublin)

ONE OF a short series of gigs this Northern band are playing while back in the homeland, this Tuesday late night performance showed what going on the road in the American mid-west for five months can do for a band.

That's not to say they were bad in the first place, but while countless young Irish bands struggle to set themselves apart from the rest, Ghost of An American Airman have acquired a stage presence that shows they're accustomed to playing to crowds in the upper hundreds, and a sound that has blended the rough hewn aspects of road travel with more typically Irish melodicism.

From the opening blast of 'Warboys', through slower ballads like 'Beautiful', and on to the band's mid-set warning that they were only going to get louder from there, Ghost of An American Airman kept an attentive if mildly sceptical audience (who wouldn't be after not having seen the band play Dublin in two years!) tuned in.

Lead singer Dodge McKay went from playing aggressive rock'n'roll frontman to a plaintive balladeer, kneeling and rocking on the Rock Garden floor. His charisma (and well-meaning arrogance) was paralleled by similar musical mood swings on the part of the band and brought each and every song from Skin, the band's latest album, to life a hundred times better than the production of the album does.

Back from the dead, indeed.

Tara McCarthy