The Young Republic – Live, Cabaret Voltaire Edinburgh, Sunday 25th May 2008
It’s been a great year for The Young Republic. They’ve gone from three years of constant gigging through their university years, to being signed to a small but fairly upwardly mobile record label in End of the Road Records, to a well-received debut release, to touring across the States and the UK.
But despite the shiny exterior there have been hiccups, and recently rather a lot. They parted company with their flautist, which led to the somewhat acrimonious departure of the drummer, although they don’t really want me to go into the details on either of these things so that’s about all I can tell you. The move from Boston to Nashville brought another casualty: pianist MJ just couldn’t settle and has also packed it in. The disruption and unpleasantness seems to have shaken the group a little. They’ve been playing together for quite a while and I get the impression they regard one another as friends rather than colleagues. Julian and Chris, who I spoke to at the gig, still seemed upset about it all, despite their determination to make the new lineup work.
To make matters worse, the replacement drummer had to be found at such short notice that there wasn’t time to properly sort out his UK visa and he was turned back at the border. Such preparations hardly make for smooth sailing, but the guy who eventually took charge of the pots and pans has played with them before, so they were confident going into the show.
But was it over? Was it bollocks. They broke a string in the soundcheck, Chris broke one on his bass guitar within the first song, every guitar needed tuning pretty much every song and eventually Julian seemed to break his acoustic guitar as well.
They themselves can’t have been happy, but it made for an excellent gig in an odd way. They dealt with the adversity confidently and never lost their humour. Julian is a truly excellent front man: relaxed, engaging and a really good laugh, he never seems fazed by anything and keeps the evening rolling over really nicely. Given the recent turmoil and the technical nightmare, The Young Republic come out of the whole thing looking very much the business.
Musically, it’s interesting. The pruning of instruments seems to have given the others a little more room to breathe. Kristin Webb delivers an amazing violin performance, from the Scottish reel she played to introduce the show to the demented classical interludes in some songs, to the long slow sad parts in others. Bob on guitar also seems to have a little more room to make his mark on songs, and does so to excellent effect. It’s possible that this could turn out to be a very good thing for the band.
Currently working on two new albums, there was a lot of new material in the set. Given my familiarity with their back catalogue it’s surprising how few of the songs I actually recognised. More familiar tunes like the superb Girl From the Northern States, Girl in a Tree and Paper Ships were there, as were the usual covers (Tom Waits this time – yikes!), but it was the new songs that caught my attention the most. Basically, for all I have no idea what they were called, they were pretty much all brilliant. They’ve lost none of their genre-related ADD, leaping about from one style to the next without ever pausing for breath, but it was strangely coherent despite this.
It sounds to me like the next two albums should be ones to look forward to – this really was an excellent show, whether you feel you need to consider the circumstances or not.
The Young Republic – Isis
The Young Republic – Girl From the Northern States
The Young Republic – Paper Ships
