IT must be tough to make the transition from cold, synthesized pop to Celtic, folk tinged rock, but Midge Ure has been trying hard for quite some time now, succeeding only moderately in melting the ice. He even came to Ireland and got together with musicians like The Chieftains and Hothouse Flowers in an effort to dump the artificial shell of synth pop, but he still can't seem to shake the legacy of Ultravox, even though he's long since dismantled the gothic towers of sound which gave that band its epic scope.
Last night, at Whelan's of Wexford Street, Ure was accompanied by just two musicians, and his own voice was supported by a little echo and a sequenced drum track, just to keep a bit of resonance in those hallowed spaces. Imagine Ultravox's Vienna performed with just acoustic guitar, accordion and mandolin, and you get an idea of the man's struggle to support the weight of his own past work using only the basic tools. Solo songs like Call Of The Wild and Fallen Angel worked better, simply because there are no synth versions lurking in the dungeons, and even an electric guitar tinged cover of The Walker Brothers' No Regrets sounded warm and familiar.
Ure appears to have some regrets of his own, particularly the fact that his latest album, Breathe, seems to be gasping for air in the current music market. Songs from the album, like Sinnerman and Guns And Arrows, are inoffensive anthems which give off a folksy flavour while retaining their wide screen vision, but Fields Of Fire treads the same muddy pastures as its Big Country namesake. If I Was seemed to sink into a mire of its own, too, "but Dancing With Tears In My Eyes was strangely, quite organic in its acoustic version. Perhaps that's how it was originally written.
All in all, Midge Ure is a man out of time playing out of fashion tunes in an uncharacteristic style; he seems to want desperately to be real and relevant, but he may be forever fossilised in a plastic pop glacier.
