Therapy?, the Return of the »Written Off«

 Are you old enough to say the nineties were your time? Did you, say, around 1994 happily crank up MTV, back when TV screens showed a few more long-haired and short-haired rockers than they do today, and the music on offer was a bit closer to actual music? Does your heart still skip a beat at the names of grunge and metal? Then I sincerely hope you aren’t superstitious either, and didn’t stay tucked up safely in bed on Friday the 13th of April for your own protection. The reason to beat that superstition was a visit from Northern Irish veterans, the Belfast trio Therapy?, who came to see us for the second time now. This time as one of the bigger treats on this year’s Ortofest menu.

They helped define the nineties. For many people, admittedly, with just one record – the album Troublegum. An alternative yet heavy-sounding barrage of melancholy and mild nihilism that was perfectly in tune with the times, with songs written with a pop-savvy sense of tact, so that even radio stations didn’t shy away from them. With my sentiments revived and a slight skepticism that we’d really get therapy the Cairns way, I headed off to Orto bar on that unlucky-for-some Friday the 13th to look for my own luck and to feed my hunger for music. The ticket price wasn’t exactly the friendliest for the days before payday – in advance you had to shell out 25 € for a ticket, and four euros more on the day of the show. Still, the guy selling them assured me that the tickets would indeed sell and that the upstairs room of one of the capital’s few real concert venues would actually be packed to the rafters. And at nine o’clock the steel shutters leading to the stairs up to that little room of hedonistic audiophile pleasures really did open. The crowd of those whose appetite for concert euphoria wasn’t spoiled by the rather steep ticket price trickled into the hall until ten. Among them were quite a few visitors from Italy and Croatia, and plenty of Slovenian fans too – among them one of those truly fanatical ones (in the more positive sense, not the Al-Aqsa warrior sense), who kept me company defending the Slovenian trenches of an alternative subculture that is supposedly slowly wasting away.

Around ten, the lights go down. The amps start to hum. Singer and guitarist Andy Cairns, already over forty, clambers acrobatically onto the stage, followed by the grinning bassist Michael McKeegan and Neil Cooper, the latest drumming acquisition of the Irish trio. Visibly in a great mood, Andy greets the Slovenian audience. “Good evening! I’m sorry I don’t speak your language. Damn it! Since we’re Irish, we don’t even speak proper English, so we’d rather just play!” The opening song is ‘Rust’, the closing track off the record High Anxiety, which sounded like anything but rusty. A bombastic combination of hard drumming rhythms that sent hearts racing at top speed right from the start, bass rumble that mercilessly tested the membranes of the PA, and a distorted guitar that, together with Andy’s vocals, finely glued fragments of intelligent cynicism and ageless energy into a mix worthy of the name Therapy?. Right after it comes ‘Innocent X / Meat abstract’, the first track from the latest, internet-downloadable release Music Through A Cheap Transistors, a collection of BBS recording sessions. The easiest comparison would be a combination of noise and industrial rhythms. You could describe the raw rock racket as a purified surrogate of Therapy?’s earliest days, with the excess ballast stripped away and a balanced poetic minimalism added. Squeezed into a crush of flesh and sweat, we were abstracted to the tenth power, and then it’s time for a fresh dose of angst – ‘If It Kills Me’. And right after that comes the first batch of hits that, sadly, never actually were – the Troublegum tandem of songs, ‘Turn’, which fills the vaults of the cramped room with a slightly sorrowful minor-key gloom. “You turn and face the strange /You turn and face yourself…/ Barging Into the presence of God…”. No false comfort. No sweet band-aids and no religious opiates. You’re on your own, baby. And after that turn toward yourself comes ‘Knives‘, which, in that loneliness, gives you a million reasons to revolt. After Troublegum comes a twelve-year jump through the history of the Irish therapists to the record One Cure Fits All – ‘Rain Hits Concrete’. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but it reminded me of the record Bleach and the earliest, heartfelt days of Nirvana, with an intravenous transfusion of Killing Joke and a shot of kerosene added. After ‘Our White Noise’ from the same record, it’s time for another trip back to the nineties. ‘Die Laughing’. Madness can sound articulate and invigorating, can’t it? And hit-worthy and inspiring enough to get people actively joining in the back-and-forth between band and crowd. Even Slovenians, my dears! Even we Slovenians aren’t immune to good music. After ‘Potato Junkie’ it’s time to check our political engagement and get empirical proof that world politics deserves a verbal beating – ‘Rock You Monkeys’ goes full throttle at Bush and his ilk. Politically critical. Engaged in the way only seasoned old tomcats can be. ‘Brainsaw’ takes us back to the more familiar sounds, and after ‘Polar Beer’ and ‘Evil Elvis’, a phenomenal performance of the Infernal Love success ‘Stories’ heats the air up to a point of climax and multiple orgasms. “Happy People Have No Stories…”. For the sworn worshippers of old Therapy? comes the indispensable tune ‘Teethgrinder’, for many the only listenable song off the underground-leaning record Nurse, which blends nicely into the cover of Joy Division – ‘Isolation’, on which, besides Andy, a random punter from the two-hundred-headed crowd decides to sing into the mic, entirely without the inhibitions usual for Slovenia. The regular set closes with ‘Walk Through Darkness’ from One Cure Fits All. Of course, there’s no getting away without an encore. After a roaring applause and calls for more, we get the ballad ‘Diane’, which without the cello parts sounds a lot rawer, but no less sugary. And the blood sugar level is hit with a stylish punch by ‘Nowhere’ and the inevitable ‘Screamager’. After that, all that’s left is for the lights to come on, and anyone left unsatisfied has only themselves to blame.

Therapy? proved they’ve passed the test of time with flying colors. Sharpness and lucidity, cynicism and melancholy, years of experience and above all heartfelt music give them the stamp of indispensable defenders of the old days, and with their evolutionary approach to musical expression they’ve definitely managed to bridge the generations. Between punks and metalheads. Between grungers and quasi-alternative types. With the message that they’re here, they’re not planning to leave anytime soon, and they won’t hand the stage over to lukewarm imitators. The crowd showed just the right amount of responsiveness and gig courage, and the only drawback was the smallness and tightness of the place. So what? In a club atmosphere Therapy? are capable of getting even more intimate with those of you who step in front of their firing squad, whether by plan or just for kicks. No room for apathy. Definitely a very successful way to feed our ever-growing concert appetites!