City limits

Rivalry with Dublin and a carefree attitude are generally associated with Cork bands. But Fred have also managed to release one of the best albums this year says Eoin Butler

The city of Cork has long been home to a thriving music scene. And although that scene straddles many genres, there are a couple of characteristics its members have traditionally shared. The first is that musicians from the cultural capital tend not to take themselves too seriously. Probably the most famous bands to come out of the city in recent times were The Frank and Walters and The Sultans of Ping FC. If anything, the Sultans were the more sensible-minded of the two groups – and their best known song ('Where's Me Jumper?') was a little ditty about the trauma of losing one's jumper in a crowded discothéque

Of course, that frivolity isn't shared by all Leesiders – certainly not by the city's most famous (soccer playing) son. But the second trait I'll mention does seem to apply beyond just the music scene. Bands from Cork appear at times to be almost consumed by their rivalry with Dublin. No matter how talented they are, they still feel obliged to measure themselves by the extent to which they are different from their counterparts in the capital. Even the easy-going nature I mentioned stands in sharp contrast – as they never fail to point out – to the self-importance of bands from The Pale. From a completely neutral standpoint, this mentality does sometimes appear to be simply an inferiority complex masquerading as a superiority complex.

Both tendencies are in evidence in the music of Cork band Fred. Their new album Making Music So You Don't Have To is one of the best Irish releases so far this year. It features 11 endlessly inventive tunes, but still – on songs like 'Get It Wrong' – just can't quite seem to let the Dublin thing go. This much we know for sure about Fred: that they are a five-piece (four guys and one girl) who came together as a band when they were students in UCC. And that for several years they were one of the leading attractions on Cork's student circuit, performing at venues like the UCC Old Bar and Sir Henry's (where they mixed original material with the odd novelty cover version – currently the theme from Ghostbusters, previously Vanilla Ice's 1990 smash 'Ice, Ice Baby').

Here's where it gets kinda cloudy. Was it, as they assert, a shared love of angling that brought them together? In one account they claimed to have originally been called The Monavalley Freshwater Three, combining "radical casting techniques with a passion for fly bait". Did they bill their short UK tour last year as the "We're Only Doing Three Dates, But We May Stay 800 Years" Tour? And did their tourbus really feature on MTV's Pimp My Ride? Well that last story, outlined hilariously on www.fredtheband.com, is almost definitely a lie.

Making Music So You Don't Have To bounces through 10 pretty diverse numbers, including the brilliant recent single 'Four Chords And The Truth'. But then, on track 11, the subject of the beef with Dublin is finally tackled head on. What's surprising about 'The Capital Song' though is that it isn't a full on assault on jackeens and all they stand for. It is instead almost a paean to them, confessing how lost and lonely the singer can feel in their city ("they do things differently, quite differently up there") and begging them to consider a less stressful life elsewhere.

Somewhere along the line you start getting the suspicion that this much vaunted rivalry between Cork and Dublin may actually be more akin to two people who appear to hate each other but who are, deep down, actually in love. As the voices of a 35-piece choir suddenly pipe up to singing the joyous coda of "Two million people can't be wrong / we'd like to stay but not for long" that suspicion becomes pretty unshakable. And from a neutral point of view all I can say is "Ahh shucks, you guys. Get a room!"