Caught Live: WHY? (Acoustic Piano show) + Serengeti @ The Button Factory, Dublin

Reasons to be cheerful: it’s Saturday night, we’re in out of the rain at a seated show, and we're about to be served two prime anticon. acts reinvented for our listening pleasure. Not too shabby really.

Opening tonight’s Button Factory show is Dave ‘Serengeti’ Cohn, who delights the early arrivals with stripped-down renditions of songs from his wonderful Family & Friends album. With minimal accompaniment (Doug from WHY? on piano and a drum machine, basically), he leads a crowd singalong on album standout ‘California’ and provides humorous interludes aplenty with a series of impromptu recorder solos: “I just bought this thing, and I still don’t know how to play it”, he bluntly admits at one point.

Headliners WHY? then take to the stage, and it’s clear from the offset that the Cincinnati collective are in flying form. Frontman Yoni Wolf – tonight dressed somewhere between Woody Allen and Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters – bellows “You people are awesome!” as he and his cohorts kick into updated versions of ‘These Few Presidents’ and ‘The Vowels’ from 2008's Alopecia LP. The acoustic band consists of Doug McDiarmid sat behind a Steinway grand piano; Yoni's brother Josiah manning a drumkit and bass simultaneously (I dare you not to be impressed); and his sister Liz on snare and precision-tight backing vocals.

This evening’s set is mostly made up of brand new material, save for a few choice cuts from Alopecia and its follow-up, Eskimo Snow (somewhat curiously, there isn’t a single note played from their mid-noughties masterpiece Elephant Eyelash). Thankfully the calibre of new songs does not disappoint: ‘White English’ sees the band at their experimental alt-hop best, while ‘Untitled’ soothes with perfect four-part harmonies and unusual rhythms. In-between songs, Yoni repeatedly declares his love of Dublin, jokingly remarking how he's “only seen one black person since I’ve been here.....and that was my friend, Dave Serengeti!”.

The biggest cheer of the night comes when Wolf(s) and co. launch into a pounding rendition of ‘The Hollows’ - and sure, it wouldn’t be a seated gig in Dublin without an over-enthusiastic lone dancer up the front. There's no doubt there is still a lot of love for the anticon. stable on these shores and, judging by the high standard of tonight's previews, hopes are very high for the new WHY? record.

Yoni Wolf photo by Sasha Bond - go here to view a full gallery of her shots from the gig.