At its best, live music makes us breathless, selfless, inspired. At worst it leaves us dull, restless, and drunk for all the wrong reasons. Usually, it falls somewhere in between, and a broad scope of live acts can cover the entire range of human emotion. Port Mayhem, a monthly night of band and cabaret, does just that, and we were led between several kinds of tears and several kinds of laughter. Run by local musicians upstairs at the Port Mahon pub, it’s relaxing and cozy in a way that most parties in shabby share-houses are and most live music venues aren’t.
As the newly-solo Mariana Magnavita took the stage and began strumming simple clear melodies on an acoustic guitar, we sat completely soundless in ladder-back chairs. Her voice was simultaneously plaintive, clear, and piercing, with just enough depth and breath to lend power to her songs. I have never seen such an attentive crowd. We sat, spell-bound, and some of us wet-eyed, listening as she sang songs of love and home in English and Portuguese.
Another wave of people came in while the second band, the Plaudits, were setting up, and soon it was standing room only: those at the back on chairs to see the band itself. Though only a few months old, the Plaudits were also surprisingly good: loud, melodramatic, amusing and very ironic. The crowd loosened up, and appeared repeatedly on the verge of breaking into dance, but the music (seemingly deliberately) dragged in places and kept things at the level of toe-tapping and head-nodding as they swung us between wry laughter, frustration, and excitement.
Acoustic sets at the end of the night can be soporific. Borderville, though, the band we’d heard about and had been waiting to see, was quite the opposite. They took to the stage with an odd mix of gentle humour and dramatic gesture, and immediately captured our attention. Though reduced to four members, drummer-less, acoustic, they created a rich tapestry of sound that a dozen or so people would have been glad to make. A set of songs with clever allusions, with pretty, unsettling lyrics, and rather gorgeous melodies was followed by an unexpectedly operatic cover of Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel, and the night finished in appropriate mayhem with three of the band members drumming (dare I say a solo?) which left the crowd laughing and applauding. They were obviously having a good time, a surprisingly rare thing in the world of art and music, and consequently so did we.
If every month at Port Mayhem is as good as tonight, there are few better ways to spend a few quid on a Thursday evening.
www.myspace.com/portmayhem
As the newly-solo Mariana Magnavita took the stage and began strumming simple clear melodies on an acoustic guitar, we sat completely soundless in ladder-back chairs. Her voice was simultaneously plaintive, clear, and piercing, with just enough depth and breath to lend power to her songs. I have never seen such an attentive crowd. We sat, spell-bound, and some of us wet-eyed, listening as she sang songs of love and home in English and Portuguese.
Another wave of people came in while the second band, the Plaudits, were setting up, and soon it was standing room only: those at the back on chairs to see the band itself. Though only a few months old, the Plaudits were also surprisingly good: loud, melodramatic, amusing and very ironic. The crowd loosened up, and appeared repeatedly on the verge of breaking into dance, but the music (seemingly deliberately) dragged in places and kept things at the level of toe-tapping and head-nodding as they swung us between wry laughter, frustration, and excitement.
Acoustic sets at the end of the night can be soporific. Borderville, though, the band we’d heard about and had been waiting to see, was quite the opposite. They took to the stage with an odd mix of gentle humour and dramatic gesture, and immediately captured our attention. Though reduced to four members, drummer-less, acoustic, they created a rich tapestry of sound that a dozen or so people would have been glad to make. A set of songs with clever allusions, with pretty, unsettling lyrics, and rather gorgeous melodies was followed by an unexpectedly operatic cover of Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel, and the night finished in appropriate mayhem with three of the band members drumming (dare I say a solo?) which left the crowd laughing and applauding. They were obviously having a good time, a surprisingly rare thing in the world of art and music, and consequently so did we.
If every month at Port Mayhem is as good as tonight, there are few better ways to spend a few quid on a Thursday evening.
www.myspace.com/portmayhem