Mutual Benefit at The Workman’s Club, Monday 19th May 2014
It was a hot weekend followed by one massive downpour as Dublin’s Mutual Benefit fanbase made their way to the Workman’s Club for the band’s show. So to say energy levels in the venue were low on Monday night is to assert something as scientifically quantifiable as climate change, or the way it only seems to start raining the second you step out of your house. Anyway, a damp audience came to greet Jordan Lee’s sombrely paced musical stylings, so either the audience goes to sleep or it perfectly enmeshes with the sound from the stage.
The first musical act to confront the semi-dozed audience was the Dublin-based Orchid Collective and the decision to have them open for this particular headliner immediately seems appropriate. They also navigate a rather dreamy soundscape, but their song structures are straightforward, with most songs starting off loose and slow, leading to an inevitable build. It’s pleasant but repetitive enough to only exacerbate the growing lethargy of the evening. A few canny punters rise to their feet to combat the oncoming somnambulism while Jordan Lee and his band set up their equipment onstage with little ceremony.
Horrible noise has been a well respected part of rock music for decades, not least of all from acts like The Velvet Underground and The Sex Pistols to name two. But beautiful noise is a thing a little less well known, perhaps due to the fact that it’s considerably harder to do. Mutual Benefit begin their performance by summoning up that elusive sound, twiddling with guitar pedals and keyboards and violin, while the percussion jangles and thumps intermittently. It’s this sound that dominates last year’s ‘Love’s Crushing Diamond’ and the highlights come when they manage to recreate it here throughout the set.
The band’s sound is difficult to label, which is strange because the music communicates something that makes a lot of sense. To hear Jordan Lee’s music and to see him onstage is to know that he belongs there, making songs. It’s a music that seems to have folk textures and a punk sensibility, it seems to glitter in gold. It’s feels compulsive and natural, like he feels his way through the notes, not always hitting the right tone but always aiming towards it. At least twice in the gig the music hits moments of sublimity, when the beautiful noise dominates the background and Lee’s soft folky singing draws a distinct line of melody from bar to bar.
When this happens the last time it’s during the final song of the set. Strong Swimmer is a seven minute track on the album, but at the gig it’s impossible to tell how long it goes on for. It encourages you to listen intently, the way you’d listen to the wind through the trees if you happened to spend a year lost at sea. His music traps you in the present moment for as long as it occurs and you can’t and don’t wish to escape from it. When it’s over the band leave and come back, then perform a song that they know they can do well, as opposed to one that’s “hit and miss”, and when it finishes Jordan says “no, that feels like a good ending.” A night of understated musical brilliance finishes without ceremony, just as it began.