Heart of Noise

A singer-songwriter has to be really bloody good to stand out. There are just hundreds of them out there, all wearing their hearts on their sleeves, all trying to quietly woo the handful of punters out there.

Oh Ruin fit the mould predictably enough, with his checked shirt and his beard and his lyrics about being oh so forlorn. The Irish musician makes his own guitars and he can certainly play them, drawing an expansive, mellow tone from the instrument, even in a higher register.

But there seemed to be a kind of disconnect between the melody and the guitar, as if he’s less sure about the singing than the playing and making the songs more abstract than they should be. Whatever you think of Damien Rice, he has conviction, and if it’s just you and your guitar, that’s pretty essential.

It wasn’t until the last few songs that Eoin O’Ruainigh (see where he got the band name from?) brought out the blues, and a sense of humour, singing; ‘I don’t want a woman, if her hair ain’t any longer than mine’. Maybe he was relieved at the set ending, but gone was the restraint. We got a sense of his character and the gorgeous Dublin accent. He even seemed like he was having fun, ending the set with a big fat over-the-top riff and breaking a string.

Perhaps the Southbank Centre, with its open space and children running about, wasn’t the best place to hear something that is supposed to be more intimate. Perhaps the set could have benefited from some rhythm and strings, which beautifully fleshes out this version of The Pillow where your head does lay. So I’m going to reserve judgment, until next time.