Meryl Streek

It is Saturday night at the Adrian Flux Waterfront, and whilst British folk punks The Men They Couldn't Hang have brought their Coming To Town Tour to the downstairs venue, I am in the upstairs Waterfront Studio, in the more intimate and exclusive space, to experience the raw power of Dublin punk poet Meryl Streek. The gig had originally been scheduled for September 12th, but the sudden death of Streek's close friend, and tour driver, Liam, meant that several of the tour dates had been postponed.

Streek's 'Songs For The Deceased' album, was released to critical acclaim last year, and it is the opening track from that album, the appropriately named 'The Beginning', that kicks off the performance. Its mixture of media samples and hypnotic riffs come from a backing track (there is no live band), whilst Streek paces the stage like a caged animal, staring out into the audience as if he is taking in the vibe and the atmosphere of the room. He is dressed in black, is wearing a black peaked cap, and is carrying a strobe-like torch light which flashes wildly within the otherwise dark spaces of the room. The microphone stand holds a bouquet of red roses, but it is not long before Streek had leapt the barriers and is in the audience, his vitriolic delivery feeling even more intense as he is now amongst us. And, as he takes us through his armoury of songs, filled with powerful lyrics and thoughts about contemporary life – about politicians, about social deprivation and suicide, about rogue landlords and the plague of betting shops, and about the dreams and the realities of those without either jobs or homes of their own, it is almost as if we have become a congregation listening to a powerful punk preacher.
As he desperately declares in 'If This Is The Life', “if this is life, then I don't want it”.

Streek's targets are wide and many – 'Bertie' is about the business activities of former Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern; 'Terence' is a tribute to Terence Wheelock who died in custody inside a Garda police station in 2005; whilst 'Paddy' is a warm and honest song about the life lessons learnt from his late Uncle Paddy. There is both vitriol and warmth within Streek's verses, and as he whirls his stroboscopic light around his head, with his audience arranged in a circle around him, the atmosphere in the room is electric, almost sermon-like, and approaching fever-pitch.