BRIEF GIG REPORT: The Focus Group/ Clone Quartet/ Barry Peak, Belfast Lavery's Bunker. 23rd March 2006

There was a reasonably good crowd at this, despite a lot of competition elsewhere and a relatively unknown quantity headlining.
Barry was up first, not strictly solo, more in a kind of rolling line-up mode. He is joined on vocals and guitar by Tanya (ex-Go Commando/ Tunic) for a lot of the set. We get some new songs, a Television Personalities cover, no Backwater material at all, and two Torgas Valley Reds songs - the single 'Torgas Valley Blue' and the unreleased 'Appalachia', although happily that song will see the light of day as the posthumous album will be released in a couple of months. Shaun (ex-TVR, now Oppenheimer) helps out on keyboards for these songs and for a few minutes they are a trio.
Clone Quartet play a set of fine indie-pop, much the same as their recent Numbers support and belfest show last year. Some very strong tunes, even if the sound just wasn't as great as the show a couple of weeks ago.
The Focus Group are billed as 'featuring Arabella Harrison' and in fact she does a short set before they come on. Very impressive acoustic stuff, a bit reminiscent of Mary Lou Lord. The Focus Group are better than their myspace material suggests, and although some of them were in No Knife they are more in tune with 90s shoegaze bands than that lineage suggests. Check them out.