The Man Whom: Live at Whelan’s

themanwhomIt was a sparsely populated Whelan’s that greeted ‘The Man Whom’ on July 14th. Accompanied by violin, cello, keys, bass and drums, Ian Doyle treated the audience to tracks from his debut album ‘The Greatest Event’.

The band started the set with ‘Autopilot’ which showed beautiful blends of vocal and instrumentation. Slowly the track builds up until the violin and cello come in for the end. While most of the tracks are of a slower tempo, Over and Under, which slightly echoes the stylings of Mumford and Sons, gets the audience bopping in time. Doyle then says that he hopes the audience enjoyed it as there’s not a whole lot of opportunity to dance to his music.

Doyle performed his songs with passion but while the full band compliments his songs, a second harmony vocal would create a huge sound live. During ‘Easier to Run’. Doyle builds up his vocal lines using sampled loops. While there’s nothing new or groundbreaking about this, when they are backed by a string section, the overall sound becomes enormous sonic soundscape. Nice!

‘Sing til there’s no songs left’ becomes memorable with the addition of Doyle playing a banjo. He uses the loop technique again for the last song with the band. Building the track up and then slowly peeling away the layers of musicians as they leave the stage until just the vocal loop remains. Overall an interesting performance, pity there wasn’t more people there though.