BIIRD is where Tank Girl and Stevie Nicks meet Riverdance, downtown. It’s about exceptional playing and trad music chops, delivered with high self-esteem, style and mischief. The 11 musicians have served their time in back bars, sessions and flash concert halls. The experience has been useful, but this seems like a determined break.
BIIRD, Mandela Hall, Belfast. By Stuart Bailie.
They make their Irish debut during Tradfest, at a busy Mandela Hall near the end of a tremendous week. For the duration, Belfast has been animated by so many great festival performances, workshops, talks, céilí dances and international visitors. Tradfest is raising the standards and proving that the city has the capacity to deliver the all-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil in 2026. It’s a treat to see it all scale up.
The Saturday show opens with Pólca 4 and banging tunes from West Kerry. The energy doesn’t relent and there’s an outbreak of set dancing where the moshpit normally happens. Pádraig Ó Sé plays the button accordion, sings and perspires. Fiddle guy Daire Bracken leaps to his feet at dramatic intervals and the groove often settles into a thumping four-to-the-floor. That’s the brief for their version of ‘The Kings of Kerry’ and the sustained rush of ‘Neilí ’n Fuacht’
Pólca 4, Mandela Hall, Belfast. By Stuart Bailie.
BIIRD have evidently worked hard with the music, which zigzags around the stage, energised by the many players and singers on raised tiers. They share the respect and second guess the moves. An old air gives way to a weird variation on Crystal Water’s ‘Gypsy Woman’.
Visuals flicker on the screen at the back. Allanah Calvert has created the band’s graphics – wry updates on Celtic knotwork and illuminations – while the styling owes something to the work of Katie Bryce and various designers. It’s the kind of layered vision that energised Horslips and Thin Lizzy, fifty years ago. Few acts have made such an effort since.
BIIRD, Mandela Hall, Belfast. By Stuart Bailie.
They make good use of mouth music and spacey sean-nós. Lisa Canny stands by the harp and directs the flow. The Nordy team is represented by Múlú on flute, shruti box and vocals plus Claire Loughran on fiddle and synths. The latter steps forward and reads a poem from Ni’ma Hassan that ends thus:
A mother in Gaza is not like all mothers,
she makes bread with fresh salt from her eyes
and feeds her children to the homeland.
BIIRD, Mandela Hall, Belfast. By Stuart Bailie.
There’s a balmy interlude when they visit Enya and ‘Only Time’. Not everything hits the spot and we appreciate that BIIRD is a work-in-progress. Still, they will enliven more festival crowds in 2024 before the recorded tunes arrive and the plan migrates. This BIIRD has flown.
Stuart Bailie
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