Kunstencentrum, Hasselt

(Friday 2200-Saturday 0045)

Question - How do you replace the irreplaceable?

Answer - You don't.

Given the motivation behind the show critical faculties should really have been left at the door for this one. No-one, least of all the band, was pretending that this event could be measured against the pre-1989 Triffids.

Nonetheless we would all have been disappointed had some of the magic of the Triffids not been on display and it is to the credit of all the Triffids, both long-standing and honorary, that they actually pulled this off through a combination of performance and smart choices.

Of course a number of songs were sung by their original vocalist, principally Jill. Although she seemed slightly nervous in the spotlight early on a number of her performances were amongst the highlights of the evening. She was always given good songs to sing so the likes of 'Raining Pleasure' and 'Goodbye Little Boy' deservedly received rapturous receptions.

But the real showstopper for me was 'Tender Is The Night', the set closer, coming on the back of an emotional 'Stolen Property'. Astonishingly Jill said that the song had never been played live before but the combination of the lyrics, the performance and the setting made this the highlight of the evening for me. So much so that the inevitable raucous applause seemed a tad inappropriate. Perhaps it would have been better if we had all maintained our own counsel for a respectful period before applauding.

Although he took on more than his fair share of vocal duties, Graham performed just the one song he had sung on record. Inevitably it was a song he had thought that he had seen the back of, 'Once A Day', and equally inevitably it made for the perfect singalong first encore.

There would of course have been little debate over the inclusion of these songs. The question was how the songs originally sung by Dave would be delivered.

Mark Snarski had said at the Q&A that it was important that a fair number of these songs were delivered by the band and that was indeed how it worked out. As the strongest singer in the band Graham was the logical choice to carry a fair whack of those, even though he has a completely different voice to Dave.

The smart choice therefore was to allocate the lighter material to the other male Triffids leaving the heavier songs for the guests. The approach worked brilliantly, particularly when allied to an intelligently paced choice of songs. There was no surprise then that Graham pulled off several highlights, opener 'Too Hot To Move ...' amongst them whilst 'Fairytale Love', always the Triffids' prettiest song, was a perfect fit for his voice.

But for me his best performance was on 'Jerdacuttup Man' where the artist formerly known as 'Evil' brought a real presence to his performance.

Earlier on Alsy also did a good job on 'Place In The Sun' whilst Rob's performance of 'Wide Open Road' was another emotional highlight.

Which leaves the guest vocalists. As mentioned above the early part of the set featured the lighter material. So by the time Harald Vanherf took to the stage, the darker brooding Triffids had yet to make an appearance.

But with 'Property Is Condemned', they do - with a vengeance. And Harald's performance was startling as he absolutely ripped the song up in sensation style. That paved the way perfectly for Mark Snarski to take over.

Mark did a fine job - his voice IS different to Dave's but he has a presence which lent itself well to the likes of 'Personal Things' and 'Life Of Crime'. But it was with a dark 'Lonely Stretch' that he really came into his own and he topped even that with his performance on the wonderful 'Field of Glass.'

When Rob was on the violin, the band were supplemented on stage by additional guitarists, usually long term associates Julian or Dougie. But, given that the exhibition had many pictures of some very young Triffids from way back in the day it seemed entirely appropriate that the band were joined on stage for 'Field of Glass' by 14 year old Dan.

I suppose there was a real chance that people could have been disappointed with this show, because David McComb is simply irreplaceable. But the combination of factors over the whole evening meant that this was a fitting tribute by 5/6 of a great band and every bit as good as anyone could have hoped.