Hamell on Trial at the Workman’s Club, Dublin, 7th May 2014.

In a recent interview with GoldenPlec New York singer-songwriter Ed Hamell (who performs under the stage name Hamell on Trial) spoke about the cathartic power of music. And, although he was speaking about the power of song writing for him personally, his live show has an equally uplifting effect on its audience.

Combining the raw honesty of one-man-and-his-guitar folk acts with the primal power and furious riffing of punk, Hamell on Trial is a unique presence onstage. Added to this is the fact that he frequently pauses for lengthy interludes between songs to share anecdotes and crack jokes – something that (along with his politically and socially charged lyrics) has earned him a comparison to comedy legends like Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce.

Support act Jinx Lennon provides an appropriate aperitif to Hamell on Trial with his own blend of streetwise poetry and elementally simple yet striking acoustic guitar work. The unrelenting ranting anger of Lennon’s music is a good a opener as any for the small but dedicated crowd gathered in the Workman’s Club on a rainy Wednesday evening.

When Hamell himself appears he turns things up a notch again, replacing Lennon’s slow and deliberately basic chords with the kind of lightning fast riffs that most guitarists would struggle to achieve on an electric.

After stoking up the audience with a few cheeky gags, Hamell blasts into the titular track of his latest album ‘The Happiest Man in the World.’ Although he reminds the audience that the title wasn’t intended as ironic or sarcastic, the meaning was more than clear.

The song is a pure punk outburst, fuelled with anger at society and ‘The Man’, and celebratory of the downtrodden masses. But the anger is far from nihilistic. Rather, it is emancipatory – a rage and a scream at the shittyness of life after which everything feels better.

With music like this to play every night, it’s no wonder that Hamell is so cheerful onstage.

At times he is so giddy to interact with the audience that a simple introduction of the next song morphs, without warning, into a prolonged interlude where Hamell steps away from the mic, approaches the front of the stage to share intimate details of his life, or stories about his son, or cracked a dirty joke or two. It all seems at random, before Hamell finally remembers that he is supposed to be introducing a song, and rushing back to the mic and launching into it all over again.

Few acts can reproduce this kind of stage presence, possibly because nobody enjoys performing quite this much.

Things take a more sombre turn with the tender and heartfelt Ain’t That Love, a slow burning number more akin to what might be expected from a singer songwriter with an acoustic guitar, albeit still shot through with Hamell’s trademark caustic wit.

While the show drew heavily from the new album, Hamell was more than willing to take requests shouted at him from the audience, resultingin Halfway (with the chorus of “Fuck it!/Why go halfway?”) and Hamell’s ode to his hero Bill Hicks.

Hamell’s punk heroes get a nod too with an encore medley of the Ramones’ Rockaway Beach and The Clash’s White Riot. It’s an appropriate way to end the show, as Hamell seems like a natural extension of the spirit of punk: older, but sure no wiser; still angry, but unwilling to take himself seriously.

Check out our interview with Hamell on Trial here.