Mar
15
Live: Power Of Dreams - Whelans, Dublin
The faces of the regular Friday night Whelans club crowd must have been a picture. Sure the band onstage were powering through the last few numbers of their set in an acceptably noisy guitar manner but who were all these old people dancing around like their lives depended on it? They’re here, boys and girls, because one of the great unsung bands of Irish music history are playing their first hometown for show for some fifteen years.
After a few false starts, Power Of Dreams are back to mark the twentieth anniversary of debut album Immigrants, Emigrants and Me and, as such, an air of nostalgia does hang in the air. To their credit the band realise this too and make the record the centre piece of their ninety minute set. Unsurprisingly, the songs are still fine things. What is unexpected is just how alive they sound in the hands of the 2010 edition of this band, a decade and a half of pent up energy seemingly spilling off the stage. It’s not just about that debut either, with a handful of B-sides and tracks from follow up 2 Hell With Common Sense proving that here was a band who should have been in it for the long run.
Despite the fact that they were written before many of the late night arrivals were born, Craig Walker revisits the songs of his teenage self with nothing but sheer gusto and enthusiasm, a feeling echoed by the rest of the band and the capacity audience. At one point a technical issue brings matters to a brief halt, allowing an audience member to grab the mic and announce that he and his wife had had their first date at a Power Of Dreams show in 1990. It’s that kind of night, leaving all involved grinning from ear to ear.
It all finished with a raging version of '100 Ways To Kill A Love' (featuring singers from both supports, Coffee and Sweet Jane) that both takes us back to where it began and points to what happens next. When a band are playing this well and having this much fun, saying no to anymore could prove too much of a task. It took them fifteen years to get here but, in a relative blink of an eye, Power Of Dreams have just re-written their past, present and quite possibly future.
Photo: Aurimas Sliogeris & Sabine Coppier
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