Cathal Coughlan at the Sugar Club

Cathal Coughlan is a modern Irish storyteller. His latest song cycle Flannery's Mounted Head, commissioned by Cork 2005 European City of Culture and released as the album 'Foburg', relates the tale of Flannery. Lost in a former mental institution now 21st century shopping mall, Flannery hooks up with the criminal cousin Gregory with disastrous results.

Blending (think industrial steel knife blender) modern architecture, Pat McCabe-style mobster violence and the bile of a mindset shaped by 80s Thatcherite Britain, the songs lash out at Celtic Tiger Ireland, consumerism, the lack of purpose and spirituality. Heavy, wordy, cerebral songs that wouldn't go down half as well if, like McCabe's best work, they weren't very funny as well.

To a packed out Sugar Club, Cathal first performed a short but relentless solo set, accompanying himself on the piano. Looking lean and mean, he spat out the words to old favourites like A Pack of Lies, The Loyaliser and a You Won't Get Me Home. After a short intermission he returned with the full band to play Foburg in its entirety, to a backdrop of bleak imagery of concrete monstrosities and urban decay.

Part theatre, part music hall, part experimental, part noise rock a la Fatima Mansions, this was Cathal Coughlan unleashed. More Brel than Walker, he slipped from one character to the other (the feckless Flannery, mad 'Cousin' Gregory, the calculating girlfriend). It was funny, it was scary, it was perfect and completely deserved the thunderous applause it got.

Coming back, punk rock style, for an encore of audience favourite Rat Poison Rendezvous, Cathal improvises the hell out the song, declaring Jeremy Clarkson dead, deceased and gone to hell. Which was met by a roar of approval from the by now well lubricated audience. What to think of that?