By Monk
I have to admit that I didn’t pay much attention to west Belfast’s The Adventures back in the (hey)day of the late Eighties, when they were bothering virtually every radio station on the airwaves with their brand of what I would have described back as “mullet music”.
Despite such almost incessant airplay over the period of three or four years, the band never really enjoyed major chart success, bothering the lower reaches to the top 20 on just the one occasion, instead motoring along nicely before officially calling it a day first in 1993 then reuniting and knocking it on the head again in 2018, with frontman Terry Sharpe following a more blues-trodden solo path.
Over the past five and a bit years, the band have got back together on an intermittent basis for the occasional show here and there, primarily on the Irish festival circuit (such as it is), so their latest foray onto the live stage, at a venue just a few minutes’ walk from ÜRHQ, seemed the perfect excuse to simultaneously kick off the new gigging year and make amends for those oversights of years gone by…
With the band bucking the trend of club-led early shows by not going on until 10.45, we decide to leave it a bit later to head up the hill to this converted church. The result is that, by the time we arrive the venue is rammed to the doors, it’s five deep at the bar and support act Saint Vitus Dance are in full swing. Like our headliners, SVD are veterans of the late-Eighties indie scene, having gone so far as to decamp from their native city across the Irish Sea to one of its hotbeds, Liverpool, but failed to take many more steps down the road to commercial success, despite offering up a debut album that, four decades later remains close to the hearts of those who know about such things.
And it has to be admitted that what they play is middle-aged indie pop for the middle-aged indie pop generation, which is truly out in force this freezing January, and the result is a pleasantly performed, rapturously received and suitably tight performance, if somewhat lacking in the youthful energy we once all possessed all those years ago…
The creaking bones of advancing years may mean that none of us are moving around as freely as back in the day, but what The Adventures lack in onstage movement (although old videos show they were never really ones for much in the way of dancing about anyway) they certainly retain in enthusiasm, with their songs still filled with plenty of verve, vigour and poetic relevance.
Scheduled to play for an all-too-brief 75 minutes, it is perhaps understandable that the sextet concentrate on the “big pops” from their equally all-too-brief career, and this is evidenced early on as opener ‘Feel The Raindrops’ is quickly followed by the majestic singalong anthem of ‘Drowning In The Sea Of Love’ and the heartfelt ‘Your Greatest Shade Of Blue’, both of which threaten to raise the roof of this venerable old venue. With the band remaining as tight as a choirboy’s buttocks, Maggie’s backing vocals are simply huge, sounding like a cathedral-filling choir in their own right, as the band’s best known (and, judging by the audience reaction, best loved) hits keep on coming in the form of ‘Send My Heart’ and ‘Hold Me Now’. And, of course, it would not be an Adventures show without them welcoming us to their ‘Broken Land’, it’s message still as raw, dynamic, vibrant and relevant as four decades ago.
Overall, the gig has the feel of a bunch of old friends all gathered together of a night of banter, craic, reminiscence and a chanter or three. And I definitely get the feeling that by the time ‘Monday Monday’ swings around we’ll still be feeling the hangover. With Sharpe hinting at new material in the pipeline, these particular adventures may not quite be over yet…
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