Kneecap, Glasgow review: 'a deadly sense of humour'

Kneecap | Contributed

Kneecap, Barrowland, Glasgow ★★★★

There’s no doubt that Kneecap, the recently-released film starring the young West Belfast rap trio of the same name, selected as the Irish entry for the Best International Feature Film award at the upcoming Oscars, has brought the group to wider attention. Based loosely on their own reality as working-class Catholics, it blends hedonistic drug use, a sectarian backdrop, a deadly sense of humour and an impassioned call for cultural awareness through the use of the Irish language, creating a youth culture classic to rival Quadrophenia or Trainspotting.

It goes without saying that the East End of Glasgow is like Kneecap’s second home. The trio – MCs Liam “Mo Chara” Ó Hannaidh and Naoise “Móglaí Bap” Ó Cairealláin, with JJ “DJ Próvaí” Ó Dochartaigh (nicknamed for the look his Irish tricolour balaclava gives him) – welcomed their fiercely enthusiastic crowd to the second of two sold-out weekend gigs at this place where their “big, dysfunctional Fenian family… can run free”. A chant of Daniel Boone’s Beautiful Sunday, a Celtic anthem, followed.

In this live context the film’s satirical subtlety was diluted, but Kneecap’s abilities as a ferocious party band were pushed to the fore. Their beats were rarely complicated but always hard, from the thumping opener It’s Been Ages to the big elastic bassline of Better Way to Live and the signature Guilty Conscience, as gabber as a riff gets while still being rappable.

They ordered that a moshpit be opened up before Sick in the Head, with Próvaí diving in himself by gig’s end. There were hat-tips to classic rave with the crunching sample of 808 State’s Cubik on I bhFiacha Linne and the old-school beats of Parful, a call for Catholics and Protestants to unite on the dancefloor.

Their politics and humour are uncompromising, with a commiseration over Ireland’s 5-0 football hammering by England earlier in the day cheered up with a reminder that Margaret Thatcher remains dead. If you don’t like that joke you’ll hate Kneecap, but the couple of thousand people here responded to them like this was the gig of their lives.