When you think musical comedy, you don't think this. Rubberbandits are an Irish phenomenon heading Britain's way – in revenge for Bloody Sunday and the potato famine, as they might style it. Their appeal has nothing to do with witty lyrics and wry observation, and lots to do with volume, delinquent charge, and a juddering on-stage energy that owes more to the live music scene than to standup. They're a Limerick version of Wales's Goldie Lookin' Chain, a pair of whippet-thin lads offering a pop culture and Irish history mashup, seen through eyes blurred by overconsumption of crack and MDMA.
Oh, and they've got shopping bags stretched across their faces like polythene balaclavas. The associations are brilliantly daft and menacing: the IRA, to whom Rubberbandits dedicate their rowdy terrace chant Up da RA; glue sniffing, also referenced in their charmless song about a fat woman. They're like errant schoolkids, too, ignoring that golden rule about putting plastic bags over your head. It's the Daily Mail's nightmare of a feral underclass come to life. But there are also sweetness and self-deprecation alongside the raucous threats to civilised behaviour.
I could live without the standard-issue sexism. But more often, Rubberbandits – real names Dave Chambers and Bob McGlynn – take their beats-heavy hip-hop in unfamiliar directions. Their YouTube hit Horse Outside, in which their ownership of a nag wins a woman's heart, is endearingly counterintuitive. A love song to a six-year-old boy resists the expected innuendoes, in favour of something provokingly innocent. Even Black Man ("I need a black man in my gang") celebrates as well as sends up our shared uncertainty in the face of PC orthodoxy. Here, the videos and songs, the clattering beats and rascal humour stack up to a wild hour of comedy.
