Kaplin

Like a rabbit-punch to the back of the neck, what strikes you first about Kaplin live is their Swiss-precision dynamics. There is no jaded posturing from these four Dublin gentlemen and that's what sets them apart from the majority of The Unsigned in this town. Align this sense of craft with a courage and sincerity in what they do and you have a band oddly out-of-step with the current retro-obsessed musical climate. Rumour has it this quartet met through a mutual acquaintance at a rock festival that featured Lift To Experience, Dirty Three and Tindersticks and certainly you could evince from that triumvirate a starting point from which Kaplin appear to have sprung. But Kaplin are no mere copyists-while they are redolent of down-at-heel glamour with tick-the-box melancholic violin, a brooding, insistent rhythm section and lyrical concerns of contempt, vengeance and redemption there's also deft nods to the aural landscape mapped out by Giant Sand or Calexico. All this is under-pinned by a sense of righteous outrage more at home on Dischord than behind those tailored suits and dusty shoes! But there's more- just when you have a tune figured out as a Bad Seeds call-and-response shanty (Your Lover's Bed) it takes you down a different road and veers into soulful instrumental rock. I'm left confused but content. One of the best bands I've seen in Dublin in a long time.Playlouder.com