WHIPPING BOY

WHIPPING BOY (Project Arts Centre, Dublin)

TO GET a crowd up and dancing requires something special - but then Whipping Boy have always had that something. Tonight was a triumph of sorts for Whipping Boy, as they moulded a link with their audience and brought them along on the trip. They managed to both challenge and coax, to attack and befriend.

"Tonight is not a night for me," Fergie sang at one stage. He was being ironic, of course - the subtle lad that he is. But then, he was singing the song, telling the story. Whipping Boy music, at its best, embodies the brutal contradictions of human existence. Where love goes, so does hate. Where everything is perfect, everything is being prepared to be shattered.

There are dangerous, disturbing moods in Whipping Boy music. They can leave you on edge, uncertain of their real intent. This is what makes Whipping Boy potent. They chase their artistic vision through the maze of the mind. Inside many of our heads lie disturbing secrets and desires. And what Fergie does is attempt to be honest about these, to explore them with a brutal, objective line of thought.

"Today is not a good day for me/For today I found out I was mad", he sang on 'A Natural'. Well, madness can be entertaining, and let's face it, we all want to be entertained. Or look at it another way; we come to our artists to escape something. And maybe in the escape we also need to learn something.

'Blinded' sounded like a hit to me. It was the song that pulled the audience up and brought them into the true swing of things. 'We Don't Need Nobody Else' could be a hit as well. They were hits here tonight, anyway, slipping into the limbs and bringing the place into motion. Whipping Boy have mastered the tension between the shift in rhythm and the change of mood. Tonight they looked like stars.

Even if the stage was the same level as the dance floor, they still looked like stars. But, you know, they are stars. Flame on!

• Gerry McGovern