The Young'Uns (Pavilion Theatre)

As you may know, The Young'Uns are a trio of singers and musicians from the north east of England. Their background is in folk music, the name being given to them by the old lags when they were starting out in the folk clubs. While I associate them primarily with sea shanties and unaccompanied tunes featuring close vocal harmonies, a considerable chunk of their oeuvre is made up of original songs, with these taking up most of the night's setlist. These ones are typically accompanied by members of band playing piano or guitar and are much less driven by vocal harmonies. I used to grumble at the preponderance of the original tunes in the Young'Uns' sets and recordings, but I have come to really appreciate them and like the contrast they present to the shanties.

The original Young'Uns tunes are often about real people, recounting poignant or uplifting stories about their battles against adversity or their efforts to make the world a better place. So you have songs about a woman who leaves little notes on a bridge encouraging would-be suicides not to jump, a man who makes meals for refugees stuck outside Calais, a young guy who was flying to meet his girlfriend in New York when his plane was brought down by the Lockerbie bombing, a Derry man blinded by a rubber bullet who went on to meet and befriend the soldier who took his sight, a British trauma surgeon who found himself saving the life of an ISIS fighter in Aleppo while other ISIS fighters stood around with guns, oblivious to the kidnappable Westerner in front of them. And so on. Described coldly these subjects sound like they could produce songs of sickening sentimentality, but they somehow work and prove to be genuinely moving, with even the most jaded cynics in the audience feeling the occasional tear in their eye (their song "Lyra" wa the one that did for me).

The other odd thing about the Young'Uns is that they are rofflers, or in particular David Eagle (who also plays piano) is. I think we needed that as the songs on their own could be pretty heavy, but it was a strange type of laughter you would get when a song about suicide was followed by Eagle cracking a joke about having played a bum note. They also used switches to shanties or uplifting vocal tunes as palate cleansers.

So all in all an enjoyable concert. And not just for me: also in the audience was Irish trad deity Christy Moore, although I completely failed to clock him and it was my beloved who mentioned that he had been in front of me in the merch queue. I think he was left to enjoy the concert in peace, which was nice.

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Irish News: "Sean Cooney of The Young'uns on immortalising Lyra McKee and Richard Moore on powerful new album Tiny Notes"