The Troubadour, Los Angeles, June 29, 1998 The Corrs Review by: rollingstone.com

It must be pretty tough for Jim Corr to stand up on stage every night watching testosterone-fueled men in the audience ogle his three sisters, Andrea, Sharon and Caroline, but he doesn't let it show. Despite a barrage of construction worker-like tactics and cat-calling throughout the evening, Jim remained the calm and collected big brother. He's probably used to it by now. As the Corrs, the family foursome have sold a gazillion records in Ireland, where their 1995 self-titled album became one of the best-selling debuts from a native act in the country's history. However, unless you caught their New Year's Eve gig singing "Auld Lang Syne" at the Peach Pit on a 1995 episode of Beverly Hills 90210 or have picked up the recent Fleetwood Mac tribute album, you've probably never heard of them. That should all change soon.

Although it's an evil trick to pit the Corrs against Irish favorite and former Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan (he was playing across town at the House of Blues), the Troubadour was nearly packed to receive the band's musical concoction -- traditional Irish folk mixed with buttery pop melodies. On the pop end, the music can be a bit derivative, conjuring up images of cutesy girl bands who sing about love-lost and love-renewed in every song (think Abba with a violin or Wilson Phillips with Irish accents). But the traditional elements, when called upon, make the music more engaging than the average sweet-and-low pop group. That, along with the fact that Andrea, Sharon and Caroline are the finest Emerald Isle exports since Irish whiskey, makes the Corrs live show a near aphrodisiac.

While we won't hold it against Andrea for wearing the same outfit as the night before in San Jose, we will berate her -- and the rest of the band -- for not playing the Irish card enough. Dreamy pop tunes like "Only When I Sleep" and "So Young" from the band's new album Talk On Corners are catchy, but it's hoe-down-like Irish jamming at which the Corrs excel. Sharon, whose wrist action could give the devil down in Georgia a run for his money, is a prodigious talent on the violin. During instrumentals like "Erin Camp" and "Toss the Feathers" it wasn't hard to imagine her smoking strings sending the Troubadour up in flames. Likewise for lead singer Andrea's tin whistle and Caroline's work on the bodhran, an Irish goatskin drum.

During "What Can I Do," Andrea cooed like a pigeon until someone in the front row presented her with a Caramello chocolate bar. An odd gift, but Andrea accepted it with humble gratitude. She was visibly embarrassed by the attention as she managed a reticent "Thank you for the chocolates" to the adoring fan. The chorus to the song, "What can I do to make you love me?" ended up being one hell of a loaded question with this crowd. Besides the traditional instrumental ditties, the musical highlight of the night was the group's Irish-tinged treatment of the Fleetwood Mac classic "Dreams," a much-welcomed kick in the arse complete with tin whistle and some spiffy percussion. The show's only downfall was its hour-and-twenty-minute length, which was a bit of a stretch for a relatively unknown band purveying sugar pop.

Still, from the evening's first note, the Corrs exhibited a surefire confidence in their music as well as a refined sensuality. With the biting of her lower lip and occasional come-and-get-me-slowly glances, Andrea radiates a passion on stage that the audience inhaled at will. At the tender age of twenty-four, she already realizes she might be wearing too much passion on her sleeve. When one audience member screamed for the song "Closer," Andrea pointed out, "Aren't you close enough?" Not just yet.

FLEADH 2000 : London Finsbury Park, Saturday June 10 2000 Review by: Roger Morton THIS IS HARD CORR  NME Magazine, June 2000 (Article transcribed by Hazel Nelson. View original on http://www.corrnucopia.clara.net)

They come to us with a poor track record in crowd-surfing, The Corrs.  Festival-centric judgement would have it that they’re too prim, too pretty and too pop to muddy that Prada in an outdoors moshpit.  But the Fleadh is not Glastonbury.  Pushchairs form wagon train circles, there are grown men patting police horses and none of the massed Irish seem to object to the outrage that The Undertones are ‘back’ without Feargal.

So heralded by trumpeted flutes, The Corrs catwalk out into the cauldron of conviviality, and proceed to destroy any notion that they’re a mere stylist’s dream of namby-pop girlishness, with fiddle solos.  How so?  Well, sure, the opening gilded ballad ‘Only When I Sleep’ is not ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’.  Hyper-ingratiating hit ‘What Can I Do?’ ain’t Eminem.  And the new ‘reggae’-tinged whistle-along ‘Irresistible’ is not King Tubby.  But there’s a deadly focus to their saturated pop, more hardcore than anything you’d encounter in supposedly edgier genres.

In a wind-chilled field, with had the crowd stumbling drunk, The Corrs’ power blasts through.  ‘Industry people’ dance ironically (sheepishly).  Six-year-olds twirl with their parents.  The Barbie-Celt-Tressed Sharon summons up the Galway sunset violin intro for the mercilessly haunting ‘Forgiven, Not Forgotten’.  And rock journeyman bro Jim guitars forth into the kind of schmaltz rock which Bono’s been getting away with for years - because it works.

Everything works for them tonight.  It’s not just the NASA-processed, ear-sex harmonies.  It isn’t merely the hit parade of blatant, blinding, airplay-kissing tunes, ‘Radio’, ‘So Young’, and irradiated next single ‘Breathless’.  It isn’t simply the chutzpah of covering Fleetwood Mac’s uncoverable ‘Dreams’, and Thin Lizzy’s ‘Old Town’.  They transcend their conservatism on all levels, nowhere more so than in the ruthless coquetry or their singer.

That Andrea knows how to play a crowd.  She may look like someone who’s genetically modified herself for a Friends audition, but she holds Finsbury Park in her manicured palm.  Her arms go aloft at peak moments.  She gets her penny whistle out for the folk interludes.  She twirls, skips and, vitally, holds back from the kind of Irish country dancing that’s marred many a Cranberries show.

In her own way, within the bounds of decency and while communicating that she (they) are decent girls and in no way drug-guzzling, maladjusted, art-weirdo delinquents, Andrea rocks.  It may not be a swan dive into a blood’n’mud moshpit, but after a convincingly wild ‘So Young’ she turns around, puts both hands together and bows to her sibling drummer, and then willfully lewdly shakes her arse at the crowd.

“I remember why we do this... it’s a good feeling,” she says.  Phew, catharsis!  Eminem should try it in a pair of strappy three-inch Prada T-bar wedges.

FLEADH 2000 : London Finsbury Park, Saturday June 10 2000 Review by: Michael Byrne http://www.music365.co.uk/autocontent/live_36854.htm

Sunshine, it’s a wonderful thing. Makes the flowers bloom, causes a certain giddiness in young folk, drags a whole load of Irish people to a small park in north London to drink, carouse, dance (badly) and listen to the cream of Irish music.

That’s the plan anyway – the reality is somewhat different.

It may be sunny and hot outside, but in the canvas covered domain of the second stage you’d hardly know it. Welcome then to the world of Cathal Coughlan, once the leader of Microdisney and Fatima Mansions, bands that were so bitter and twisted even to think of them would put your teeth on edge. Plus they had an almost terrifying pop sensibility. Which is why listening to Cathal today, you just wish he’d liven it up a little. Not that there’s much wrong with his delivery – the voice is as sonorous as ever – but at this stage in the early evening his tales of woe backed by somnambulant music wears you down a little. He used to have a spark that frightened people, not it just makes them uneasy in the way a babbling street drunk would do.

You couldn’t call Lunasa scary – their unique brand of diddly-eye is a welcome relief and not in the slightest bit Oirish. This is the real thing, real traditional music backed by some modern beats that invigorates. Very nice, very old but very, very warming.

As is Prefab Sprout. As Paddy McAloon begins to resemble Roky Eriksson more and more with each appearance, it’s surprising that he keeps to the oldies but goodies here and doesn’t go off on a mind-fuck trip. But then, he knows what the folks swooning in front of him are looking for – ‘Johnny Johnny’ check, ‘Cars And Girls’ check. Honestly he can’t go wrong, dragging a couple-hugging crowd back into their teenage years to remember painful schools days, the things that might have been and how wonderful chart music used to be. If there’s one thing that doesn’t make it feel totally right, it’s a sense of a man resting on his laurels. If he could sound like this 15 years ago, why the hell ain’t he coming up with new stuff like that now. It’s a question to ponder, but one that will wait because we’re having too much of a good time right now.

When we first heard that The Undertones were going to play Fleadh, we thought “wow!”. When he heard that it was going to be without the voice of the ‘Tones, Fearghal Sharkey, we thought “What!”. How can you have Derry’s finest moment without that voice. Truth of the matter is that if Fearghal were up there with them, it probably would have descended into a brawl. They really love each other, they do.

So instead, they get a young Derry man, Peter McLoon, in to fill those thin, vibratoed shoes and, guess what, it’s great. If Prefab Sprout dragged up back to our adolescent years, then The Undertones make us want to stay there. John Peel was 1000% correct when he called ‘Teenage Kicks’ the best single ever. When it bounces out of the huge Ballygowan draped speakers like a moody 15-year-old the place goes mental. And can you blame these guys and gals? The hits just keep coming – ‘Here Comes The Summer’, ‘Julie Ocean’, ‘Girls Who Don’t Talk’, ‘Jimmy Jimmy’, ‘I Wanna Be A Male Model’, ‘My Perfect Cousin’. The songs say it all, a trawl through innocent and hopeful teenage years which 20 years on are played with as much gusto by these 40somethings as when they were first performed in the Casbah all those years ago. Forget U2 and the “big” Irish bands – none will ever match the power, fun and thrill of the ‘Tones. You could almost leave now and know you’d witnessed something special.

Which, in reality, would have been a good idea. As after this pop blow to the solar plexus comes the wiping of the musical arse, The Corrs. OK, that might be a little harsh, but why in the name of all that is holy are The Corrs so damn big. Four reasonably good-looking girls, one ugly brother, tunes from a low-budget John Hughes teen flick from the 80s and a crowd of people who go wild when they sing ‘Runaway’ – which I have to tell you I felt like doing. There’s nothing that wrong with The Corrs’ music, once to get over the fact that it is heartless, soulless, mind-numbing, corporate wank of the laziest, over-polished order, the kind of stuff that would get a whole chapter to itself in the sequel to American Psycho. I mean, you could quite easily listen to it… if strapped to a chair unable to reach the off switch. They play a new song, ‘Irresistible’ which you probably sue them for under the trades description act, as it frightfully is easy to resist.

Andrea tells us that they haven’t played live in a while and could we please forgive them is they sound a little rough, thank you very much. I wish they did sound rough, for that might add a little spice to this saccharine set, a little extra dimension to that act. But sadly it doesn’t. And as they finish up with an overblown almost Riverdance number, you get the feeling that today we saw how great Irish music can be (the Undertones) and how skull-splittingly banal it can be too (guess who).

At least I’ll always have the Derry lads.

Interview with Jim and Andrea http://www.pitp2000.com/corrsinterview.html PARTY IN THE PARTY 2000 : London Hype Park, Sunday July 9, 2000

Andrea and Jim from the band popped in to tell us why they're so excited to be playing at Party In The Park 2000...

Question:What is the funniest thing that happened last year?
Andrea: Last year we flew in for Party In The Park and it was so tight the intro was playing while we were running on stage.
Jim: We flew in from Denmark and then we had to fly straight back to Sweden afterwards - it was crazy!

Question:What's it like playing to 100, 000 people?
Andrea: Looking at 100,000 people for any band, no matter how mega, is pretty overwhelming. Also, we've been spending the last year recording our album, so we haven't been gigging so much. Its pretty daunting anyway but 100,000 - wow! It's a great buzz, pretty exhilarating!

Question:Do you think, as a band, you get on better or worse because you are siblings?
Andrea: We girls give Jim regular beatings!
Jim: That's why my head is the shape that it is. That's why I'm wearing sunglasses - it was Sharon with a baseball bat! I refused to clean her shoes - I'm sick of cleaning her shoes! Actually I find it very hard to talk about. I have issues, I'm having therapy.
Andrea: There's a place for violence in a family band, it's the logical conclusion after a hard days work.
Jim: I daren't argue with that.

Question:Your new album 'In Blue' is out soon - what can we expect?
Jim: It was written and recorded over one year. We're extremely happy with the way it's gone so we're really hoping that everybody loves it.
Andrea: The first single 'Breathless' is a high impact song and certainly leaves me breathless when I sing it. It's so hooky that it was an obvious choice for the first single but it doesn't reflect the whole album - there's quite a diverse selection of songs on it.

Question:Do you know which songs you are performing?
Andrea: I think we're doing three. I'm sure we'll do 'Breathless' and we'll probably do 'Radio' and the third one will be a surprise - to you and me! It becomes obvious which songs to choose because if you're going out to make a statement in three songs then you're not going to be go for a ballad.

Question:What is your biggest crowd-pleaser?
Andrea: 'Runaway' always gets a good response, which is good because it was the first one, so its special. Also, 'What Can I Do', 'So Young' and 'Radio' really goes down well, it did at the Fleadh Festival the other day.

Question:What do you like the most about being famous?
Jim: We don't see ourselves the way other people perceive us, that's for sure. In Ireland they're very easy going and you can walk down the street and people might recognise you and say hello but they'll leave you alone. It's a cool country to live in as a 'celebrity'. We don't think of ourselves as celebrities. You have to keep grounded as there are lots of distractions and temptations in this business and it's not real at times. At the end of the day we're all the same.

Question:Do you know what are you going to wear on July 9th?
Jim: Not yet, but for me it's always a toss up between a blue chiffon number or a pink chiffon number!