AO Arena, ManchesterThe Irish band rip their wispy image apart with thunderous drums, crunchy guitars and full-throated vocals from an energetic Andrea CorrThere’s a French and Saunders skit from 1998 in which the comedy duo impersonate the Corrs, presenting the Irish family band not only as clones, but as moony-eyed new age folksters. It’s a fair representation of how the group were perceived at the time, their blend of soft rock and Celtic fusion planting them somewhere between Enya and Mirage-era Fleetwood Mac: the production of their earlier records definitely suffered from the blight that was mushy turn-of-the-millennium adult contemporary.Tonight, however, as the band appear on stage amid the thunderous slams of Sharon Corr’s drums and a phasing synthesiser, crashing immediately into an epic rendition of Only When I Sleep, there’s none of that wispiness. The instrumentation is beefy, full of crunchy distorted guitars and toe-tingling bass, but the real grit is in frontwoman Andrea Corr’s voice. After skipping around the stage and twiddling with the black fabric of her dress, she steps up to the mic to deliver a full-throated vocal with gorgeous rough textures. Continue reading...