With an Irish touch

The Hibernian Jungle’, a band comprising of four fantastic young musicians from Ireland, recently performed a great set at Hard Rock Café as a part of the Jameson India tour.

The varied musical backgrounds of the band members only brought an extremely interesting mix of sounds and melodies to the table. Vocalist and guitarist, Barry Hargadon, is also the lead singer for the Irish post-rock band, ‘Waiting to Explode’, while keyboardist Ciaran O’Rourke is a touring member of the UK’s funk and trip-hop act ‘Bonobo’. The bassist Tommy Moore plays for the renowned Cuban outfit ‘Havana Son’, while percussionist Karl Moran is a member of ‘The Palace Band’.

At the gig, these differences came together in the most interesting way as they focussed on recasting the music of legends like ‘Led Zeppelin’, ‘Talking Heads’ and ‘Creedence Clearwater Revival’. As expected, a few numbers from Irish musicians like Van Morrison, ‘The Dubliners’ and Rory Gallagher were also performed.

Be it songs like ‘Mrs Robinson’ and ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’, Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’ or even Johnny Cash’s ‘Get Rhythm’, they played their renditions to perfection. It was nice to see the City’s music lovers move to the music of a Scottish band like ‘The Waterboys’ and sing along to ‘Satisfaction’ by ‘The Rolling Stones’.

“I had a really nice evening. I came with my wife and the two of us felt like we were back in the 60s, listening to their music. It was a good choice of covers!” says Sandeep, an audience member.

Barry Hargadon, the vocalist, has always been popular because of his peculiar voice, which fits every genre he sings. He was seen standing on his chair and jumping around on stage till everyone was singing along with him. “Bangalore has been the most amazing audience we’ve played to for a while. It seems to have a good culture of music and the people here are friendly and awesome!” he says.

Towards the end of the two-hour long set, two sisters from the audience joined the band for a song each. While one sang ‘Zombie’ by ‘The Cranberries’, the other nailed Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’, into which she added a few Hindi lines and melodies.
“It was an amazing experience to have performed with these guys.

They’re all extremely talented musicians. They usually beatbox during their act but unfortunately, they couldn’t do that today. Still, it was great to share the stage with them,” says an excited Ridhii Paul, one of the sisters who jammed with them.
Whether it was the Irish spirit or the good music, everybody went home after a nice evening worth remembering.