The Ollam – with more posts than a picket fence: post rock, post funk, post trad and post grunge. File under eclectic.

The Ollam – Norton’s, Birmingham – 6th February 2025

OPPORTUNITY OR CHAOS?

It’s hard to know, but the world has gone truly mad when a venue gets shut down, when neighbours cite noise, especially when those neighbours are a backpackers hostel. As in exactly the sort of people who should be the noisy audience at exactly the selfsame venue. This meant a last minute transfer, from the now closed RMBL to Norton’s, with little enough time to publicise and plan accordingly. So from the 500 plus audiences elsewhere, this was a rather more select gathering, perhaps 100 or so, a win win for me, always preferring intimate over angsty.

THE OLLAM BACKSTORY

I was there largely for the frontline of the band, tin whistles and uillean pipes, but it seemed many were drawn more by the other band members, so a little exposition is maybe needed. The Olllam, 3 l’s, were initially the brainchild of whizzkid producer, Tyler Duncan, producer for artists as varied as Carly Rae Jepson and Michigan funksters, Vulfpeck. However, in 1999 and 2000, he had been the All-Ireland champion of uillean pipes, the first American winner. His idea was to draw in that distinctive flavour into the miscellany of styles he had also and subsequently mastered.

Recruiting first John McSherry, pipes and whistle maven for Lúnasa and Donal Lunny’s Coolfin, a top notch rhythm section was also required. Michael Shimmin is an in-demand percussionist who can shuffle effortlessly between genres, majoring somewhere between jazz and folk, with Joe Dart the bassist for the aforesaid Vulfpeck, poster boy for the band, where his Flea inspired bass runs are the main calling card. Add in Seán O’Meara on guitar and Detroit producer Joe Hettinga on keys and there is room less for fusion, and more, much more for fission. With Duncan now too stretched to fit the live band into his schedule, his part in the band has now been taken by Glasgow’s finest, Ross Ainslie, also on whistles. We like him, and he is no stranger at applying his talents outside the box.

UP FIRST…

…was O’Meara, multi-tasking for the night, and his band. Fresh from the release of his debut solo release, his set encompassed largely his own songs, he singing and playing electric guitar. All within a rock’n’soul mould that, live, is a little more muscular than on disc. His band of keyboards, bass and drums, were tight enough to give the material a decent spit and polish. He asked the audience if they liked traditional (Irish) music, several times, in fact, if with little representation of his own love for it, but it paved the way for the main course without insult.

Lights down, and never really rising, on strode the band at 9. McSherry and Ainslie were each placed at the front, centre stage and sideways on, facing each other on wooden chairs. Keyboards to the left, drums behind them, with Dart and O’Meara bobbing about on the other side of the stage, O’Meara now touting an acoustic guitar. With a complex and interconnecting backswell, Shimmin’s drums miked high and resonant, they were off, the two whistles sparring in unison, two musicians, one heartbeat. Such was the sound balance that each instrument was clearly audible within the mix, allowing the listener to dip in and out, effortlessly, of what was being played and by who, irrespective the main thrust of melody.

WHO TO WATCH MOST

Opening with, Lllow The Sun, first up from 2022’s The Elllegy, their 2nd disc, it was hard to know who most to watch. The song starts with some slow keys, before Shimmin gets stuck into a solid pattern, lighting the blue touch paper for the rest of the band. Acoustic or not, O’Meara seemed like a man posessed, hands skittering about his instrument, chording and sliding, as if in an abandon. Meanwhile, Shimmin, dwarfing his tiny kit, was battering the bejasus out of it, with a precision honed military rattle, with Dart flitting his fingers all over his frets, notes pulled out in a counterpoint attack. As indeed were Hettinga’s on the keys, so much so that you might forget the central dynamo powering the whole outfit. Except you couldn’t. Whistle, or rather, whistles, have never seemed so hip and vital.

RELAXED BUT COMPLEX COMPOSITIONS

This the template, most of the set comprised this sort of message, folkies, funksters, jazzers all equally enthralled. Sticking with The Exillle’s Dream, from the same album, it was entirely the inability to classify or contextualise that kept the initiative so sparked and alive. Again, the keyboards seem to offer an entirely different treat, before summoning in the near Jo’burg township guitar and bass, the whistles then dialling in from another planet. It shouldn’t join up, but does, as if it were all entirely normal. Older song, The Follly Of Wisdom gave O’Meara a little more leeway to shine, between the telepathic symmetry of McSherry and Ainslie. Bar the two whistlers, intent only on their instruments, that the rest of the band were smiling, at each other and at each musical excess, showed how relaxed they are with these complex compositions.

You’ll be getting the hang of how they name their tunes by now, always, or is that alllways, adding the extra ls, for the l of it, if you will. So, too for The Arrows That Murder Sllleep, the first to have McSherry switch to the uillean pipes, they waiting on his lap for just this moment. Ever wondered how pipes might feature in a groove driven soul-jazz work out, the sort of track that would accompany speedboats racing away in 1970’s cop films? The answer is as if invented for the genre. With McSherry now making free use of both instruments, Ainslie was also switching the size and key of his whistle, it was only my slow consumption of Galway Red that gave any hint of the time passing, so engrossing the stage performance.

THE FULL MIAMI VICE

Particular favourite, Stream Of Sillver came in after an hour or so, an almost hypnotically driven number, Shimmin looking not to be moving a muscle, with audience ears revealing the truth. Dart’s bass bobbled and bubbled about those stacato rhythms and it wants you to smile, makes you smile. I think it on this track that Hettenga went the full Miami Vice, in an extended wig out, turning that smile to a grin. A brief reprise comes for The Burialll Stone, a mellower piece, free from percussion until Shimmin bolts on a repeating funereal rat a tat. Smile to grin to pure shock and awe. Totally transfixing.

THE ESSENCE OF THE BAND

Sona, from German record producer Zedd’s last album gets a feature next, given the Olllam had featured on it and for him. To be fair, it sounds prime Olllam rather than prime Zedd, were I to know what that sounded like, but the set is slowly winding down, with the applicable and expected bursts of soloing from the rhythm section. Shimmin embraced this more than his bandmates, his rudimentary kit proving the old adage around less is more. Oddly, I had expected Dart to have taken fuller advantage of his bar or so, but one could argue he was anyway soloing constantly and throughout. Announcing Three Signs Of A Bad Man as the final track, the lurching rhythm manages again to match the vibe of sharp suited shenanigans with pony traps in Ballyclare. This is the essence, perhaps, of the band.

Given the fact we are still shy of the full 90 minutes, it was both foregone conclusion and the belligerent non-acceptance of anything else that guaranteed the encore, with the six musicians returning for a final salvo of Bridge Of Glass, as near as damn it their signature tune, and a fitting end to an exceptional evening. Cast aside any tribalism, there is something here for everyone.

Here is that Bridge Of Glllass, with the earlier Duncan inclusive line-up of the band.

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