The Last Post

No Dancing in Katy Daly’s is the Sunday night haunt of Belfast music fans. The crowd nurse end of the weekend consolation pints, their faces lit by the glow of hundreds of fairy lights that turn on and off at random. The atmosphere is of subdued camaraderie – like a family gathering only the bond of music is thicker than blood.

The Last Post quietly make a start on what passes for a stage. It’s a few seconds before the buzz of conversation dies down but slowly the unobtrusive music draws attention, enchanting and absorbing every corner of the room.

Alan Kelly on guitar is accompanied by the barest of drumbeats and the surest of harmonies. On record the songs barely manage to hold themselves together. Fragile with spaces, the music constantly feels on the verge of collapsing in on itself. Live, Kelly draws delicate breaths from his Fender guitar – inspirations and expirations separated by silence when you wonder will the music ever return.

The sweet intertwining of male and female harmonies carries the trademark Last Post melancholy lyrics. On opening song ‘Good things don’t last for long’ Kelly sings “I don’t mind the pain” and you know you know that feeling.

‘Silence Seems To Say…’ is all heartbreak and longing without ever being clichéd or pathetic and the gorgeous crooning sighs on ‘Something tells me’ are fit to caress the most tired soul. And for a band that recall Parsons and Wilson in their hopelessness and harmonies, the Dublin accent is charmingly clear in ‘Waiting’ – “No one told me it could feel ‘dis’ way again.”

Granted there’s nothing particularly new or adventurous about The Last Post. It’s the same bittersweet sentiments of love lost and found that have been doing the rounds forever. But unassuming beauty should never be discouraged and tonight demonstrated that those songs that make perfect lonesome headphone listening stand up just as well to live scrutiny.