OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, 21 September 2008

Lau

IF YOU have not yet heard Lau play, I both pity and envy you. Pity, because you are missing out on arguably the most enriching audio experience of this, the first decade of the 21st century, and envy, because the thrill of discovering that sentence to be truth rather than hyperbole still lies ahead of you. Don’t just take my word for it, however – Channel Four’s website says “Lau are, quite frankly, the best band in the world right now”. Yes. Why?

Lau fuse the warm tones and rich textures of traditional music with the wild “out there”-ness of techno, the intensity of rock and the asymmetric rhythms of world music. So far, so Martyn Bennett, but Lau are above all a band of brothers from different mothers and it is their close personal and musical camaraderie that enables them to assimilate these disparate elements and meld them into something entirely their own.

Martin Green and Aidan O’Rourke are both fearlessly inventive musicians, pushing their instruments to the outer limits and beyond. Green hits and pummels his accordion to produce electronically distorted heartbeats and impossibly low bass tones that Jimmy Shand never imagined in his wildest dreams. O’Rourke treats his fiddle the way Hendrix treated his guitar, leaping from sublime beauty to distortion hell in the blink of an eye. In between them, Drever’s restrained guitar and voice maintain the vital link with reality that keeps the evening balanced and prevents any teetering over the edge into self-indulgence.

The show opens with some typically laconic Lau banter. With Lau, it’s not so much what they say as their impeccable timing; at one point the squeaking of the upper steps in the auditorium prompts an ad lib from Green to their soundman, “Gareth! You’re working – calm down!” leaving both audience and band united in a prolonged fit of helpless giggles.

A Martin Green tune to start with, followed by ‘An Tobar’, a new O’Rourke composition, part of a solo commission by the arts centre of the same name in Tobermory. Though the bulk of the evening’s tracks are from their eponymous, essential CD, there is a further new tune from O’Rourke, the edgily beautiful ‘Sea’, which brings to mind the unornamented minimalism of Steve Reich, and the second half opens with an as yet nameless new tune with intense pizzicato from O’Rourke, while Drever adds foot percussion and wordless vocals.

Not many bands would perform a work in progress to anyone other than close friends, but Lau have the knack of making a couple of hundred people feel like their close friends.

Green dedicates the ‘Results’ set to his “new Uncle Andy” (Thorburn) who is at the back of the theatre in a musical phalanx which also includes Bruce Macgregor, Marc Clement and Duncan Chisholm. ‘Butcher Boy’ and ‘Freeborn Man’ are as gloriously poignant as ever, ‘The Jigs’ are irresistibly energetic and the night closes with ‘Hinba’, the quintessential Lau track with its erratic time signatures and restless vitality.

An encore is immediately and loudly called for and O’Rourke’s elegaic ‘Gallowhill’ is the coda which eases us gently back into the waiting world outside. “The best band in the world right now”? Yes.

© Jennie Macfie, 2008

Links

• Lau