Sun Mahshene / Keeley – Workman’s Cellar, Dublin – Gig Review – 22/12/22
by Killian Laher

The Workman’s Cellar was the venue for a pre-Christmas show b/y Irish band Sun Mahshene. First up was Keeley and most of her band, minus their keyboard player.  They kicked up a storm on some jangly guitar tunes such as the shimmering Last Words and The Shadow On The Hills which featured guitar work that evoked the Smiths or the Sundays.  The band seemed to grow their set as it wore on.  A pair of new songs dedicated to the death of a German backpacker in the north of Ireland showed some adept guitar work, before they finished with a feedback-drenched Echo Everywhere.

The six-piece Sun Mahshene followed, opening with the shoegazey The Righteous One.  Their full, thick sound worked very well on Ride The Wave and This Girl I Know, featuring gloriously crunchy guitars.  The band mentioned they’re working on a new album and treated us to a couple of tracks from it: the fast paced Reverie and The World That Grinds You Down.  This latter tune was markedly different to the rest of their material, featuring male and female vocals along with prominent keyboards.  They showed they could also pull off electronica with the dark Tales of Fiction and No Control before finishing up with the lengthy cacophonous When The Bomb Drops.  This ten minute track showed the band in all their visceral power, loud-as-fuck for good measure, sending us all home with ears ringing!