Mull It Over 058: Mucker - Live at the Union Bar, Belfast
Belfast punks Mucker arrive at the Union Bar fully formed; screaming bloody positivity. A special night ensues for the launch of their brilliant debut E.P.
Originally published via Blowtorch Records
The battered yearn of Johnny Thunders’ ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory’ pours out of the P.A. for what seems like eternity. In fact, I leave to use the restroom and come back, and it still doesn’t pay to try. I’m not complaining, though. It’s one of the finest songs ever written and goes to further swell my excitement for what’s to come. Because after all the names, connections, bands, stories and journeys it has taken for Mucker to arrive here tonight in this dark corner of South Belfast, what really got me out of the house and on my bike on this drizzly early summer night were the songs.
Ah yes, songs. Not all bands write them, you see. And don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a fan of Geese as the next psyoped guy. But there is a trend, undeniably, where the latest descendants of the 2010s/20s post-punk boom seek catharsis in ever more remote corners of musicality, and the ‘song’, as it were, has begun to shed melody in favour of something closer to a four-minute sequence of vignettes. Now, as much as this is necessary (a different article altogether); there is an acute mastery and romanticism to the three-minute pop song. Whatever happened to verse, chorus, bridge whereby the time the second refrain comes around were all singing together to the most mythical of all beasts: the hook.
Well ask and ye shall receive, mucker. After a two-year gestation and a vague social media presence, we’re finally introduced to this mysterious group, affectionately crowning themselves the merchants of ‘soy boy shmick-core’, tongue only partly pressed into cheek. As it turns out, we’ve met before. Alumni of a plethora of bands from Northern Ireland who’ve toured up and down this country and around the world: And So I Watch You From Afar, Axis Of, BeeMickSee, Bomb City 7 - there are miles of hard-worn road and bags-full of independent CDs and gigs behind this lot; so to hear this music so resoundingly complete and confident, not to mention a full house in the Union Bar tonight, is not much of a surprise at all.
With what can only be described as angry positivism, E.P. ‘1’, released only last week clocks in at barely over ten minutes in length, serving as a first-round knockout punch before you’ve had time to realise you’re even in the ring. And actually, instead of a punch, it’s more of a knockout hug. The first song of the set tonight and E.P. opener ‘BIG MAN’ sets the tone. Perhaps if you were one of the students milling around the bar outside you might be forgiven for thinking there was some sort of unhinged massacre going on next door - in reality it was four lads screaming bloody positivity with lines like ‘you can do it, you can do it, you can do it’ and ‘things are only gonna get better’. The latter, a harbinger for tonight’s show.
As you might expect with one, four-song E.P. under their belt and a just couple of singles, this was going to be an efficient showing. One-hour tops. And so, we rollick through everything in the catalogue tonight. ‘BIG MAN’ paves the way for the rest of the E.P. with each song building and then collapsing under its own world, threaded together by the one, unmistakable feeling that only comes from a rock show like this - that we’re all in it together. For my money, there’s hardly a more pointed and gut-wrenching lyric in punk at the minute that cuts as close to home as ‘Everybody I know’s gotta make a living. Everybody I know makes tough decisions’. There’s no secret meaning here or oblique references. I’ve been vibrating since the show started. I need to keep checking if the drums are still intact, it’s that loud.
The ramshackle energy continues as a feeling of the inmates are now running the asylum permeates. Beverley from openers Problem Patterns joins for a turn on guitar; as does Rory Friers from ASIWYFA. It’s a veritable who’s who of Whoville, as old faces and industry stalwarts are spotted around the crowd. Not bad for a band with about ten minutes of musical output. The power of the song.
The emotional peak of the gig comes in the shape of ‘FALL IN LOVE’. The sublime closing track of the E.P. has been on a constant loop through my AirPods this week. This one really puts the soy in ‘soy boy shmick-core’. Potentially the only slightly veiled references tonight come here. Not that frontman Brendy leaves you wondering for too long. His mini-sermons between songs steadily build the Mucker ethos into a world unto itself as the set barrels on. But with ‘FALL IN LOVE’ comes a moment of striking self-awareness and vulnerability; a song about rediscovered love. Love for yourself, for your partner, for your band, for music - for anything. These lads have been around the block a time or two in various guises. As we all have. And somewhere along the road you can lose sight of the things you once thought would always define you. For my own part, I’ve both loved and hated making music, writing about it, even listening to it at times. But every so often, certain bands and certain songs come along and make you feel the same way you did at 16 again.
You can’t put your arms around a memory? As it turns out, you can.