The Minutes - Hello, Hello, They're Back Again

Spare a thought for your poor, damaged correspondent. I was splayed out on the couch at seven Friday evening, close to death. Blame it on The Stones, as Kris Kristofferson used to say, although the Tequila and the Guinness must shoulder at least some of the animadversion. The thought then, of rising from my pit and stumbling in to town for another gig, caused shivers deep in my rachis. But I thought of you, dear reader, and remembered, ruefully, that this is a vocation, not a job.

It seems that The Minutes or their “people” were somewhere near my wavelength, for I was handed a pair of earplugs after I negotiated entry. The thought of inserting them in my shell-likes and copping a snooze down the back crossed my mind, but the work must take precedence over my decrepit state.

The Minutes have always been a breath, no, scratch that, an angry typhoon of fresh air, blowing away a thousand namby-pamby, moany bastards sporting acoustic guitars and wondering why people won’t sleep with them. A manly rock band who fucking rock - a notion from another time, perhaps, but a notion to be cherished. I, and others like me, will, only too happily, fondly recall previous Minutes gigs. Their midnight show on the Jerry Fish Stage at the Picnic for one, where they took the whole weekend and nonchalantly put it in their arse pocket, or that night in a small room in the Odessa Club, where a crowd of about thirty people very nearly combusted in such an intense crucible of ROCK.

Tonight, the first of two sold out shows, is their long awaited return to active duty after almost three years of real life getting in the way. Why we’re upstairs in Whelan’s, rather than the main venue, is a bit of a mystery. I’ve genuinely had ticket queries from friends and relations, so I doubt there would have been any problem filling the big room. On the other hand, I’ve seen The Minutes in here before, supported by another loud crowd on hiatus, Preachers Son, and it was a sweat-soaked epiphany, so, despite my ill health, I was glad to be in.

There are promises of a wealth of new material, but what we get tonight are four songs from 2014’s brilliant Live Well, Change Often, and a whopping nine cuts from their debut album, Marcata, released in 2011. I’m not familiar with this record at all, which is my loss, based on tonight’s performance. There is some new stuff, but not as much as you might expect.

The first three songs find the band settling in, Mark Austin’s voice taking a bit of time to warm up, although that is not to say that latest single ‘Love, Hope And Other Plans’, ‘Secret History’ and ‘Heartbreaker’ don’t kick arse, because they most assuredly do. The band really achieve lift off on the Bowie ‘V-2 Schneider’ quoting ‘Fleetwood’ and Glam ball-grabber ‘Cherry Bomb’, which both remind the bopping throng how much they’ve missed this band.

One, as far as I know, new tune, ‘Rumour’, borrows a bit of ‘Teenage Kicks’, which sends the eyebrows of Undertone/Today FM man Paul McLoone, stood beside me, northwards, but the tune then banks off to somewhere else entirely, so that phone call to the lawyers never goes through.

They’re giving us both barrels at this stage. Drummer Shane Kinsella, who looks like a dodgy sailor from some impenetrable Joseph Conrad novel, stands on the bass drum and walks around beating time on his sticks. Bassist Tom Cosgrave, at least seven feet tall from a where I’m standing, prowls the stage, laying a foundation you could build a block of flats on, and the multifaceted Mark Austin’s moustache and slicked back hair combo calls to mind a World War II spiv who could get you that pair on nylons on the black market, no questions asked. He walks his guitar down into the crowd, always a class move, and demolishes any remaining doubters.

‘In My Time Of Dying’ – how ironic to hear this sung at me on this of all nights – rocks with a power worthy of Zeppelin, and it’s always good to hear a gaggle of head bangers roaring out the laments of Blind Willie Johnson. ‘Guilt Quill’ cops a feel of Nirvana, and the ghost of Rage Against The Machine pops up a few times too. The closing 1-2 knockout combo of ‘Hold Your Hand’ and ‘Supernatural’ descend into telepathic cosmic jams, the whole band playing as one instrument. They leave the stage with the machines running, emitting a strangled feedback howl, which is just as it should be.

Having a fag after the show, Mark Austin laughs at me when I tell him, perhaps a tad over floridly, that his band are a patch of blue sky in the all-prevailing smog of acoustic guitars. “There’s actually loads of acoustics on the new album”, he guffaws, “but they don’t sound right ‘cause we fuck them up.” Best news I’ve heard all week. If recent single ‘Got My Love’ is anything to go by – it sounded like Kinsella was throwing his drums out of a second storey window behind the slide guitar chorus earlier – the album will have been worth the long wait.

And they cured my hangover. Supernatural.