• Date: Thursday March 5th
• Venue: The Stables Club, University of Limerick
• Doors: 8pm
• Tickets: €10

The Republic of Loose return to the Limerick has been reschedule for MARCH 5TH  at The Stables Club at the University of Limerick of Thursday. All tickets bought for the original date are still valid, eightball.ie and UL Students Union Ent apologise for any inconvenience caused by this date changed. 

 Read on for a view of life in the Republic….

It starts with a rap of sorts – OK, call it one side of a mentalist conversation – over a churning beats’n’riff loop, which briefly segues into a 70s rock squealer, like the stage has been hijacked by Peter Frampton before breaking into sharp funk steps, a beautifully wired soul vocal and a rallying tune, like Sly & The Family Stone are in control. By the end of the 45 minutes and 12 tracks, you might have recognised something like a sleazy Hall & Oates; mercurially lopsided Celtic soul hip hop; light, breezy slices of Californication; a drunken Outkast in an after-hours shebeen; even a Deep Southern twist on a harmonising boy band. But mostly you’ll clock a band that gleefully trailblazes through the melting pot of 21st century sound, that thoroughly knows and trusts its musical chops to pull off a sensational, unafraid, surprising, sometimes alarming ride. As Wikipedia puts it, the band appear “unsure whether they want to be gangbangers or cowboys or gospel singers.” No wonder their album is called Aaagh!

Come join Republic Of Loose; a band as well named as this, their second album. A collective of like-minded souls with a loose aggregation of influences and inspiration. But they’re not some funkateers from LA, Memphis or Philadelphia. This is a bunch of white Dubliners on the musical razzle. And if you have a problem with that, then frontman Mick Pyro, he of the gorgeous white soul voice, will cheerfully stick two fingers in your direction, but in the most academic manner.

“ It all originated from when I was in college, in bands, and going through all kinds of torture about authenticity and what it meant, and trying to find proper voice for the person I was. I started educating myself and reading a lot of shit and I realised that – I know this sounds highfalutin – but authenticity was a construct. And a bogus construct at that, invented by a bunch of wack-jobs outta their heads on opium and nature in the nineteenth century. Once I’d made that revelation, I felt completely liberated. I just stripped down my brain for all the things I liked in music, which all came down to James Brown and The Rolling Stones; they were the cornerstones I could build a foundation on.”

Pyro used the Stones as iconic role models. “They were listening to contemporary music, the hip shit. Even in the early 1960s, stuff like Howlin’ Wolf would only have been ten years old, so it wasn’t this ancient, archetypal canon of music; it was fresh and immediate. I wondered why can rock’n’roll bands still don’t draw from that source of American music? In England, a whole narrative and self-contained mythology has developed about rock music so it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. To me, the Stones went straight to the source, and the fact that they were from such an alien environment to what they were trying to engage in, it made for this weird, new hybrid. We’re not throwing ourselves at the wall and going goofy with it; it’s just fuck the irony and the parody of it, and why not completely immerse ourselves in the music that we love and block out all bullshit and fashion, and create our own values? We know we didn’t look right for R&B, which spurred us on even more! Plus the women at rock gigs are non-existent or bet-down. Its good to watch women dancing!”

By going their own way, Republic Of Loose have forged their own originality and naivety, with a hip-swinging centre that women – and yes, you men too! – love. In any case, the music has its own authenticity because it’s forged from passion and empathy, not from style and careerism, and it’s already paid off; when released in Ireland, Aaagh! reached number two in the charts and garnered two nominations apiece for the prestigious Meteor and Choice Awards. Meanwhile, mesmerising live performances led to tour supports with The Neville Brothers, The Thrills, The Zutons, Scissor Sisters, Alabama 3, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Snow Patrol, The Roots, and Dilated Peoples, plus festival appearances at Glastonbury, T In The Park, The Fleadh, Oxygen and the Transmusicale, Nice Jazz and Furia Sound festivals in France.

The core of the band numbers seven – Mick (vocals), Benjamin Loose (bass, vocals), Deco (keyboards), Dave Pyro (guitar, vocals), Brez (guitar, vocals), Coz Noleon(drums and percussion) and Barnes (drums and percussion), with percussionist Gargos and backing singers Orla La and Eve Ill Jones along for the trip. But the trip began with Mick and Dave Pyro (no relation). Dave (the Republic’s blues/roots touchstone) had been making Tim Buckley-esque constructions with his band Sportsman while Michael had been writing subversive pop songs for his kid sisters’ band Chicks, who recorded an album for Dreamworks in 1998 but were mucked around and then dropped before the album surfaced. When Michael and Dave united soon after, they began playing blues together before assimilating other influences - Sly Stone, Mahalia Jackson and the Wu-Tang Clan – to emerge as Johnny Pyro and the Rock Coma. But in 2001, four new members – and drinking buddies – joined; Brez, who’d learnt to play guitar with Dave years before, Brez’s mate Deco (the self-confessed “nerdy techie influence on the band”) Coz (an old school friend of Michael’s) and Benjamin Loose. They changed their name to Republic of Loose (Mick’s suggestion) and opened the boundaries. In 2003, they signed to Big Cat, releasing their album debut This Is The Tomb Of The Juice in 2004 and winning over a sizable and loyal fan and press base.

Now comes Aaagh!, a record with a rare exuberance and comedic spirit in among the tunes and pliable rhythms. It’s altogether a looser mindset than the typically uptight rock mentality, and closer to hip-hop’s dialogue-friendly vibe. “Fun is a bad word I suppose, but it shouldn’t be. Timbaland and Missy Elliott albums have this explosive, almost spirutual will to fun. We wanted to bring the light in because that’s the vibe of the gigs, and the first album was pretty morose, so I wanted to celebrate us now.” Mick’s namechecking of Elvis Presley and Dion taps the same attitude. “Dion could express joy and pain simultaneously in one syllable”.

Benjamin: “The indie mentality is that if you have a little bit of fun, you can’t be profound or meaningful. With us, it’s mixed up; there’s a huge amount of humour in there right next to lots of truth and seriousness. For me, the music is party dance music, but the lyrics explore stuff like personal politics - what it’s like to be alive, rather than po-faced ‘we really mean it’ love songs. Thankfully Mick doesn’t write them!”

One of those personal songs is the “I’m Greedy”, a slice of midnight funk over which Mick issues instructions to “come here to make you sweat / come here to get you wet.” Just a tiresome bit of bravado? Not if he precedes it with the confessions “I’ve got a small dick, that’s the way God played me.”

Mick: “Brez just did this beat that was going around in my head as I walked to the chipper one night stoned and all this shit came out. We recorded it the next day having a laugh, and it wasn’t even meant for the album, it just sounded too good to leave off. I’m a bit embarrassed to be trying to sing it but I got a lot of shit off my chest. It’s always good for people to know that you have a small dick because it gets rid of that moment of anxiety, ha ha.”

Benjamin: “It’s a very important thing to be said because no one’s ever said it in a song before. It needs to be out there in the present metrosexual climate, that it’s OK for male humans to have a small dick!”

Clearly this is part of Mick’s plan to celebrate the change in Ireland’s climate. “The country used to be a repressed, but its changed utterly. Like “Break” is about the orgiastic mayhem of life in Dublin, and the lack of guilt, in a hedonistic way.”

The Republic isn’t all about spiritual abandon, boozing and loose morals. “We place a lot of emphasis on detail,” says Deco, “and everybody in the band is on top of their game. Nothing goes down without it being really thought about.” This is never more apparent than on “All Mine”, Deco’s favourite track: “I just love the way the independent parts work together - the smooth R&B groove and Mick’s crazy rapping and the Latin progression. I get a Ceelo Green vibe off that.” Dave, however, plumps for “Translation as the album’s best: “it’s got this very different, weird, evil element to it; the beats are more primal, whereas some of the others are a bit more pop-driven.”

Other songs you should know about: The Latino-hop-tainted “Break” features former Chicks vocalist Isabel Reyes-Feeney (who lives in Madrid). “The Idiots” recalls the broody tension of grunge’s soulful Shawn Smith (Brad, Pigeonhead), the slinky “Comeback Girl” was released as a single in Ireland in July 2005 and became a huge radio hit, while its even slinkier follow-up “You Know It” (here’s where the connection with white soul-disco supremos Hall & Oates is at its strongest) became an even bigger hit. When it comes to record company machinations to take Republic Of Loose onwards and upwards, they’ve chosen to be as independent in nature as they are in spirit, with Aaagh! released on their own label Loaded Dice.

Mick: “After the first album, majors started making noises, but the shit they were saying, it was like they were trying to tell you how to write our own album and taking money off you for the privilege. And then they’ll delay your record when they feel like it! I saw it happen to my sister, so if you can do it on your own, you’re not in hock to anyone.”

The Republic is prepared to fight for their right – which cues into that album title? Aaagh! What do they mean? Mick: “It’s like a scream, a statement of intent. The song itself is like, fuck everybody. We get so much gip for playing American-style music, and there’s been a huge hatred of us in Ireland, so we’re addressing those kinds of people. But there are also those thousands who love us. It’s pretty extreme.”

So which side will you be on? It’s pretty obvious, once you join the Republic…

Tickets available from the University of Limerick Students Union.

For more info log onto www.republicofloose.com