Whelan’s is packed like I’ve never seen it before; I am assured that the place was never this infested even during Damien Rice’s unstoppable rise to world-dominating insipidity. All of which is a welcome boost for the Essex six-piece, Redjetson, making their Dublin debut. Singer Clive Kentish is a young man with the weight of the world on his shoulders; he has the appearance of a fatigued office worker who, having cast off jacket and tie, cries plaintively to the world about all its many woes on his weary way over the edge. His intense, Curtis-like vocals are occasionally lost in the fuzzy, patchwork quilt of melody and sheer noise created by the band’s shemozzle of guitarists, and his attempt to have his glockenspiel-playing heard at the end of opening number, Divorce, proves almost futile. But Redjetson are very, very good; they believe in grand, tortured, slow-burn, rock epics (each song a mighty six-plus minutes) which could easily be self-indulgent but for the passion they convey through their songwriting craftsmanship and uncompromising amplification. This is one of the best and certainly loudest performances I’ve witnessed in a long while; Redjetson are worthy contenders for greatness in 2005.

The tinnitus has far from subsided when Bloc Party take the stage. At this point, the young audience get decidedly giddier, a testament to the influence the London band has already generated here, despite not gigging in Ireland until now. Kele Okereke can barely conceal his glee at their enthusiastic welcome and launches himself headlong into party mode, even if the band take a few tunes to catch up with him. Bloc Party are actually a lot more party than arty, and you feel that they could launch into a rocky version of EWF’s September without anyone batting an eyelid. The jury may still be out on some of the forthcoming album material, but there’s no doubting the quality of Little Thoughts and Helicopter, both of which are greeted with much air-punching and drunken male-bonding. The band may have begun the set a little holiday-weary, but by the end they are going balls out and are necessarily urgent and pretty damned exciting. They have work to do to stay ahead of the accolades and superlatives being lobbed at them, but they certainly have the squad to achieve. Party on.

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