Reviews
The Eagles’ smooth drive-time rock has always divided opinion. Regardless of where you stand on their artistic merits, however, who could disagree that the Californians have provided popular music with one of its great soap operas?
Though their songwriting was occasionally laid back to the point of horizontal, off stage they lived at full throttle. Drugs, groupies, fist-fights: it seemed the only dull moments were on their albums. They were every rock biographers’ wildest dreams come true.
Forty years on, the now grizzled musicians are acknowledging the roller-coaster trajectory of their career with a tour billed ‘the History of the Eagles’. The concert has an autobiographical tinge and starts with original members Glenn Frey and Don Henley alone together, delivering a stark acoustic reading of little known compositions ‘Saturday Night’ and ‘Train Leaves Early In The Morning’.
Beneath low-hanging lamps the songs shine a light on often overlooked side to the Eagles: spectral and careworn they speak to a soulfulness that the glossy production of their biggest hits tended to obscure.
They are joined by the rest of the line-up (rumpled axeman Joe Walsh last to step out). Gradually, the tempo is raised and guitars are plugged in. Still taking a chronological approach, the show morphs into a rewarding (and very long) ‘best of’: ‘Take It To The Limit’ is revealed to have razorblades under its bucolic veneer; somehow the ensemble breathe fresh-life into ‘Heartache Tonight’ and ‘Life In The Fastlane’, staples so familiar from radio it is at times difficult to judge them at face value.
With ticket prices approaching €100 for the best seats, the onus is on the group to put in a committed performance and this they do.
There are two encores, the first devoted to a rootsy rendition of ‘Hotel California’, the second concluding with ‘Desperado’, their full-blooded homage to old west mythology. It’s a fitting conclusion as the Eagles have gone some way towards embellishing their own legend tonight.
The annual exhibition of work by degree students at the Crawford College of Art, now showing in Sharman Crawford Street, is not to be missed. Even those jaded with conceptual art will find plenty here to surprise and delight.
Spread over three floors, with 62 artists participating, this massive exhibition, a testament to both students and teachers, explores the language of painting, sculpture, photography and other media.
The head of the college, Orla Flynn, deserves credit for the professionalism that permeates every aspect of this year’s show. She is moving on soon to a post in the Cork Institute of Technology, but leaves behind a college brimming with confidence.
No single style prevails. From Eamonn Shanahan’s intense and claustrophobic video, to Peter Martin’s urban scenes in stained glass, and Helen Stringer’s sculptures that evoke techniques of spinning and weaving, the prevailing feeling is one of confidence.
This exhibition provides a therapeutic counterbalance to narratives of cut-backs and dwindling budgets. Many of the works have been made using found or discarded materials.
There is a hypnotic beauty in Melanie Mook’s assemblages of everyday objects suspended in space. An renewed interest in Surrealism, is evident in Femke Vandenberg’s paintings. Much of the work is stripped-back, devoid of colour and retro in feeling. Among those whose names stand out are Helen DeVitt, Max MacNamee, Patricia Kickham and Maria Catherine O’Sullivan. Colm O’Brien’s installation of doors leading into a maze of tiny spaces is first class, as are Alethea Lucey’s paintings of birds, trees and lakes.
Elouise Flannery and Grace O’Leary take on issues of anxiety, stress and coping with the world, while Karen Hickey-O’Shea’s paintings of children are haunting and poignant. In sculpture, Catherine O’Shea and Aude Dimofski-Gottman’s work is impressive, as is Ciaran Kavanagh’s thoughtful installation that examines the gestation and making of an art work.
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