Watching Masterchef you sometimes find a contestant who’s baffled Greg Wallace by what’s on the plate. “I’m a bit worried by what’s on this plate and whether these flavour combinations will work” says Greg as he looks at sautéed peach, on pan fried buzzard with textures of prune. Which brings us to Tuath who have made an EP of shoegaze post-punk with liberal lashings of saxophone and sung in Gaelic.  There’s no way ‘An Taobh Tuath(ail) EP’ ought to work, yet oddly enough it does.

Tuath are Donegal native Robert Mulhern and Ashley Mobasser with a revolving door of supporting musicians. Mulhern had been exasperated by not being able to find a suitable vocalist so he took on the duties himself.

Mulhern admits he’s no Frank Sinatra and we’re not going to disagree on that point. The vocals are for the most part buried under a forest of shimmering guitar and an urgent rhythm section. It’s done partly to hide Mulhern’s lack of range but doing this always places emphasis on Mulhern’s singing acting like another layer of instrumentation.  It creates a dreamlike quality to the songs. Only on I’Dtuath De Mo Cuid Naimhaid does Mulhern’s vocals feels completely out of sync as the mix puts his vocals too much to the forefront.

Musically it would have been so far, so shoegaze but it’s Mobasser’s sax which adorns the waves of riffs that provides the distinguishing touch. Mobasser strikes the right tone with his playing, complimenting the guitar where required. Ocras doesn’t lack any propulsion, with Interpol like guitars generating tension before the body of the song blends into more shoegaze territory. Níl Tú Ann reverberates with atmosphere while D.M.T is an unruly raucous racket.

The ‘An Taobh Tuath(ail)’ EP was intended to be the first half of an album, but Tuath went ahead and released it separately. While it has imperfections, it stands out as something fresh and different and does a lot more right than wrong. It whets the appetite for the next instalment of their recordings.