This could be the easiest and quickest review ever written: do yourself a favour – get a ticket!  ‘Nuff said!  Sadly, you may already be too late – they sold out on their second night and I’m sure they’ll do it every night.

Dead Cat Bounce is a band of four Irish guys – a ‘rock god’ on lead, perhaps Jason Byrnes’ ginger brother in leopard skin pants on drums, a talented leprechaun on keyboard and a gnarly, hairy bass player who sighs repeatedly that ‘music is his mistress.’  The boys play better than most, sing great harmonies, strut, preen, punch the air and pretend to be the real thing; it’s easy to think they could have been if they hadn’t seen the funny side of it all.

The songs are imaginative and eclectic and the lyrics quite alarming – running kids over in the playground, giving your OK girlfriend’s sister the clap and a Wiggly lesson for the littlies – Good Touch, Bad Touch. Their Tom Lehrer-like bleakness is interspersed with the new dance craze ‘sweeping the universe’ ‘Doing the Kick‘ (audience participation required) and their ‘happy’ song about the ‘sunny, summer day we killed that guy!’ What a laugh that was, eh?

They bicker, banter and occasionally reveal their frailties on stage, but it’s all great fun complete with buckets of Irish charm and musicality. Everything from a capella, heavy rock to Westlife and Deep Purple.

The crowd loved them, hooting and shouting, with the girls in the front row adoring them all the while.  You will too.  I can do no more for you than quote Molly, the great pop guru of the ’80s, one more time: ‘Do yourself a favour!’