The Ordinary Boys live @ Mandela Hall, Belfast

Few performances will have done more to shape the future of The Ordinary Boys than the ignoble appearance of frontman Samuel Preston on Celebrity Big Brother. Ironically, his dalliance with trash television, though ensuring the commercial survival of the band, would also signal their exile from the affections of credibility junkies. Tonight’s show then was all the more impressive for its impervious Bovver boy swagger, a performance to transcend the sanctimonious expectations of the oh-so-fickle opinion mafia.
Resplendent in their Fred Perry finest, our young and tender hooligans bound onto stage and lash us with their embittered epistle against the record industry, ‘The List Goes On’. Preston, giddy on the fumes of adolescent adoration emanating from the front rows, pirouettes about the stage, guitar flailing. His bandmates play with a delirious gusto; spangling our Saint Patrick’s night with their bright-starred sounds.
The malcontent guitars and a surly, know-it-all vocal confer a brash charm on ‘Talk, Talk, Talk’. And though there are times when they struggle to extract profundity from their songs’ modest wisdom, surely no-one can question The Ordinary Boys’ ability to provide big-hearted, joyous entertainment? Just witness the Pavlov like response to a rabble-rousing ‘Boys Will Be Boys’. They finish with ‘Seaside’; spring-heeled guitars elevating a lyric freighted with emotion. It is a fittingly adrenaline-soaked denouement to this kamikaze freefall through youthful, exuberant sound.
On this form it won’t be long before the hipsters come a crawling back, ready to declare their undying love for Preston and gang. The Boys done good.