Even people who are unfamiliar with Kneecap’s sharp but raucous music may well be aware of the legal issues that have beset the Irish-English bilingual rappers over the last eighteen months. As support for the oppressed people of Palestine has caused them no end of grief in the UK, the USA and beyond.
Fortunately, this has done nothing to tame this mouthy and opinionated trio, and with a partisan crowd which included many who loudly proclaimed themselves to be part of Birmingham’s Irish community, they dedicated “Get Your Brits Out” to “all the paedophiles in the Royal Family”. Similarly, there were regular chants of “Free, free Palestine”, “Maggie’s in a box” and support for the Irish Republican movement – even though this was entertainingly tempered with Mo Chara smirking, “Don’t worry. Some of my best friends have English friends”.
Kneecap’s sold-out Birmingham show was way more than a political rally though and MCs Mo Chara and Mόglaí Bap were all but drowned out by audience participation on the likes of “Better Way to Live” and “Fenian Cunts”. Not that the crowd’s enthusiasm was limited to singing along. There were also plenty of plastic pint cups flying around, energetic mosh pits, crowd surfing and climbing on each other’s shoulders. In fact, at times it felt as if the keffiyeh, Celtic and Irish rugby shirt-clad human soup in the stalls could explode at any moment as things got ever more rowdy.
Still, this is the kind of excitement and fun that live music can bring in droves and while Kneecap’s records are hardly demure, the band are something else altogether on stage. More boisterous, more energetic and altogether more punk rock. Not that this translated into violence. There were frequent calls from the stage of “if anyone falls over, pick them up” and while there was a bit of push and shove on the over-full dance floor, everything was good natured and celebratory.
In fact, the dance floor was the real focus of much of the evening. The stage at the O2 Academy was bathed in barely illuminated dry ice throughout the show. So, even those with a good view weren’t able to see much more than shadows of the lads bouncing around the stage and unleashing their machine gun delivery on “Fine Art” and the incendiary “I’m Flush”. However, the steam billowing off the crowd was clear evidence that there were precious few shy retiring wallflowers in the house. The 808 State-sampling “Ibn Fiache Linne” and dubstep-heavy “Parful” being particular stirring calls for the whole place to go bonkers.
That said, it was the final brace of “H.O.O.D.” and “The Recap” that really lit the fuse and saw DJ Prόvaí crowd surfing way back into the stalls. In fact, many in the audience barely noticed Kneecap slip off stage and were still losing themselves as the venue’s PA pumped out “The Irish Rover” at full volume, long after they had gone.
