The second night of The Murder Capital’s UK tour in support of their third album Blindness rolled into town on Good Friday with a show at Manchester’s New Century Hall playing most of Blindness alongside old favourites.
It’s been an up and down few years since The Murder Capital were cut down by the COVID lockdown at the worst possible time. They were a couple of dates into their first US tour after a sold-out UK run that had them primed to take the same trajectory as their friends and countrymen Fontaines DC.
When normality returned they had to rebase and refind themselves and it took until 2023 for their 2019 debut When I Have Fears’ follow-up Gigi’s Recovery to see the light of day. It was a very different record and the momentum they’d built had gone. They were still, however, an absolutely enthralling live proposition. Fast forward two years and a series of arena shows with Pearl Jam and Nick Cave and The Murder Capital are at home on stages far bigger than the intimate close-up in-your-face venues where their reputation was built.
What The Murder Capital have done is evolve with the changing circumstances to create a live experience as powerful as their initial incarnation but in more direct and wide-reaching ways. Centre of it all as ever is James McGovern who has become a front man less lost in his inner demons to a confident strident leader of the band who understands the power of collective communion. The songs aren't as focused on intense personal loss these days, but wider broader life issues that affect us all and those songs act as a weathervane that people are drawn to in order to lose themselves in the music and experience.
As the front half of New Century bounces and sings along to new songs like Can't Pretend To Know, Words Lost Meaning, Moonshot and the between albums single Heart In The Hole as well as the more obvious old favourites such as Feeling Fades, More Is Less and a brutally forceful For Everything, they replicate that magical moment where music brings people together. Driven along by Diarmuid's drums, the perpetual force behind The Murder Capital, the dual guitar onslaught of Cathal and Damian create the whirlwind for the crowd to throw themselves headlong into the band's unique form of cathartic experience, particularly during the mid-set Slowdance I and II where the red-lit stage and the enveloping nature of the music feels like the end is nigh. There's a moment where they bring on a young man they met at a Piccadilly Records in-store earlier in the year who told them he wanted to come on stage with them at the show to be the sixth member during Don't Cling To Life.
It isn't all brute force though. Gabriel demonstrates the beautiful subtlety in his bass playing on Swallow, encore-opener Trailing A Wing and Love Of Country. His contribution to the band isn't diminished at all by the fact he may not be the jack-in-a-box stage prowler rabble-rouser of old. In fact the whole band are far more static than before, there's less of the up-close interaction between them, but you sense the bond has become a more intuitive one that doesn't require proximity any more.
Love Of Country brings the night to a close prefaced by a message from James that we will be judged on how we stand up to bullies and aggression on behalf of those that can't defend themselves, referencing their release of the single with funds going to support Medical Aid For Palestine. The Murder Capital understand we are stronger together, when we face trauma and injustice head on and don't shy away from confronting it and that people are far more important than politics. In that most basic of ways they haven't changed at all in the past six years.
The Murder Capital's official site can be found here and they are on Facebook and Twitter.
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