Fight Like Apes, Whelan's, Dublin
- Published in Live
The sun is shining on Whelan's, as it is shining on Fight Like Apes right now. After record company woes and a 5 year gap between albums, their eponymous album has finally arrived. They've booked 3 nights in Charleville Castle with buses coming from all around the country and today, with the CD finally in shops and online, they are having a celebratory matinee show for fans upstairs in Dublin’s famous home of live music. The all ages show is sponsored and free to fans who have bought the album on the day of release.
Critical response to the album has been broadly positive and many of the songs have been part of from Fight Like Apes’ live shows over the past few years. It’s almost ten years since vocalist MayKay and Pockets formed the group. There have been a number of changes to the rhythm section in that time but the dual core of the band remain intact and have lost little of their youthful shambolic intensity over that decade.
The front row of the audience is made up of children. They sit patiently on the wooden dancefloor sipping sugary pop and waiting for the fizzy pop to begin onstage. Fight Like Apes are fashionably late and the start is delayed by technical difficulties. MayKay must appear like a proper old school pop star to the kids, with her back-combed hair and elaborate face paint, but they readily engage her in conversation while they wait. She offers sage advice to them about wearing earplugs, never incorporating a laptop into your live setup, and not drinking beer in the daytime, as the bands’ drinks arrive to the stage.
With the technical problems remedied the band launch straight into the opening track from Fight Like Apes; ‘I Am Not A Merryman’. It’s in the classic mold they first cast with their early EPs, all pounding rhythms, screechy synths, and an incessant vocal hook that will echo in the ears of the listener all day after first hearing it.
The grown ups in attendance are dancing carefully around the edges of the dancefloor so to avoid stepping on, or falling over, the kids and it makes for a wholly different live atmosphere to see the generation gap temporarily spanned through noisy tunes. MayKay walks down among the crowd during ‘Lend Me Your Face’ and invites delighted audience members to sing the chorus into her mic.
Old and new singles sit side by side in the hour long set and, even in a dry house with the blinds drawn against the afternoon sun, the crowd dance enthusiastically. One young man in particular is throwing eye-catching moves, limbs flailing and body popping like a karate rock Bez. MayKay singles him out, introduces him as her new favourite dancer, and the pair tear around the dancefloor during a riotous rendition of signature song, ‘Jake Summers’.
She returns her attention to children and explains that it’s OK to use bad language sometimes to express oneself creatively, and the band give a demonstration of that principle by playing ‘Ice Cream Apple Fuck’ and ‘Digifucker’ in quick succession. To be fair, the boys and girls don’t seem too bothered by it and a few of them seem fascinated by the old movie dialogue played during the breakdown in ‘Digifucker’.
The set finishes in the traditional manner with upturned keyboards and heads banging to old favourite 'Battlestations' and we emerge, blinking, into the sunlight; stone cold sober and with adrenaline pumping. As with their upcoming shows in Charleville Castle, Fight Like Apes specialise in unique gigging experiences.