Gig Review: The Saw Doctors at Mandela Hall (23/11/12)

BY CATHAL DELEA

The Saw Doctors are a fucking amazing band.  That, dear reader, will be the crux of this unfolding review.

Watching them take to the stage around 9ish on a dreary Friday night, I expected little.  However, during the course of the night, The Saw-Doctors played a tour-de-force of a set, belting out the pick of songs from their thirty years as a band, while still making time to throw out a new Christmas single – I know it’s still November but fuck it, McCartney’s at it too – which is cracking. You see the thing is, once I had acquiesced, shrugged pretension and had a few pints, it all became clear – The Saw Doctor’s aren’t big or clever, they’re chainsaw-via-lobotomy, special-helmet wearingly simple, and that’s exactly what makes them great. They’re that pub band that everyone knows isn’t going to change your life, but they do change your night out – you dance, jump, bump into, and make extremely poor passes at each other instead, which on these cold winter nights is all you really need.

So there it is, The Saw Doctors are a fucking amazing pub band. Take a jaunt to the interweb, find out where you can go see them, fetch some tickets and prove me right.