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Cork, Ireland
An Irish based alternative music blog. Music news, gigs, live reviews, album reviews... You'll find them here. If you want anything featured or removed, please shout. I hope you'll discover something new to love on this little experiment of mine. Currently editing the Music Section of the UCC Express and contributing to Motley magazine on campus, as well as writing for PopCultureMonster and 4FortyFour. Always looking for new projects so please get in touch if interested. Thanks for reading.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Live Review: Cathy Davey @ Oxegen 2010

When & Where: Heineken Green Spheres on Saturday 10th @ 16:15.

I wanted to like Cathy Davey a lot more than I did I'm afraid. Her sublime third album, The Nameless, was one of my unexpected highlights of the year so far and as a result I was quite excited to catch her in person. Green Spheres was even more packed than it had been for Wallis Bird just half an hour before, though ultimately in the wake of another rising Irish female, Cathy simply fell a little flat.

There was numerous highlights: Army of Tears, Reuben, Moving, Little Red, The Nameless, though there were certainly a handful of songs missing. Where was Clean & Neat? Or Happy Slapping? On two or three occasions I actually found myself asking what track was playing - the sound was simply inaudible in parts, while some of Cathy's back catalogue simply sounds very similar.

Despite the above criticisms, I did enjoy the performance. Just not to the extent I had hoped. The crowd went wild for the well-known tracks, in particular the penultimate track Moving. Had the set finished with this fantastic number, many would have had heads held high and spirits aloft as they ventured back into the torrential downpour that was gathering pace outside the tent, though she continued to play Sing For Your Supper, a track that simply seemed to go over the heads of much of the crowd.

Cathy sounded fantastic (for the most part), while her band played impeccably. The performance as a whole just seemed to be void of the energy and excitement I have seen her put into shows in the past.

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