Interference (Whelan’s, Dublin)

Interference are basically an all-male five piece, though a female friend guests on their impressive current single release ‘Looking for Someone’. Tonight the song prompts their (wheelchaired) guitarist, keyboard player and joint main vocalist to suggest in mock-ironic tones and full-throated rural brogue that “you can’t beat a good ballad.”

The rest of the vocals are taken care of by the bass player who occupies centre stage for most of the set. They make music which is, by and large, pretty difficult to categorise except to say that it seems to somehow combine the country rock of The Byrds with funk rhythms and punk distortion and a rustic violin thrown in for good measure.

Throughout, a video screen hovered above the stage alternating between shots of the lads doing their stuff down below, personal memorabilia and archive material dealing with everything from mass production lines of bottles of pills through the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace to post-World War Two footage of the Allied troops returning home, as well as psychedelic patterns which acted as a backdrop to the on-stage activities.

To judge by the in-between song banter it sounded as if Interference were a mite nervous tonight for some reason and they didn’t really appear to relax until the deserved encore. As a consequence they never really came out of themselves like you felt they could and this over-tightness gave the impression of clutter rather than clarity. It was a pity really because, all in all, this was a provocative gig, different in its own way, with lots of good ideas floating around asking to be harnessed more effectively.

With bands like Interference, who, in a musical sense, have a lot going for them, it takes longer for their most successful form to come to full fruition. In the meantime: stimulating enough, loadsa potential but room also for greater definition.

• Patrick Brennan