The Frank & Walters / Dave Couse

Savoy Theater, Cork - 20 Dec 2000

The Frank & Walters recently return to their native city to do a pre-Christmas gig, a show that was billed as being "The Franks' biggest show in Cork since the City Hall show in 1993".

However before the local-boys-made-good hit the stage the concert opened with an acoustic set by the former 'A House' front man, Dave Couse. Dave treated us to some great songs from the A House back catalogue – "Endless Art" & "No More Apologies" among them. He even hinted at making a comeback. Don't hint Dave, on the basis of tonight you could do worse that actually make that comeback.

So to the Franks. Their forth album Glass is a very electric type of effort and me thinks that tonight the majority of the audience did not know of the change of musical direction that came with the Glass album. Even though they performed all their best known songs ("After All", "This is not a song", "Fashion Crisis Hits New York", "Colours", "Indian Ocean", "How will I survive", "Time To say goodnight" and "Plenty Times") this was a concert that was primarily promoting the aforementioned recent release.

On the night these new songs merged well with the older material to create a catalogue of music that any band would be proud of. What surprised was the variety of the new material  - from great pop tunes to great ballads. Take "New York"& "Paradise" for example, they are some of the most beautiful ballads I've heard in a long time, while "Underground", "Isn't it Time"& "Forgiveness" - to be frank - really got the crowd going.

I last these guys at the start of 2000 in a small venue in Cork and to these ears it was clear that they have gained in confidence since then. Tonight they seemed like a band on a mission. The band themselves preformed very well & knew what the audience wanted. If only all concerts were like this.

My only problem with the gig was that there not more songs played from "Beauty Becomes more than life" – their excellent 3rd album (although I suppose, any band with an impressive catalogue of great tunes can afford to pick and the choose songs they wished to perform). All in all I'd guess they they performed about 20 songs. Apparently not enough though as the audience of over 1000 were shouting for more.

Excuse the naff ABBA allusion but, The Frank & Walters & Dave Couse - thank you for the music.

Noel O'Regan