Sun is so hot
A band from Berlin, a pub in the village, and a summer evening that was still bright at 10 p.m. I was on my third pint of Murphy’s stout when the singer silenced the room.
She stepped onto one of the small tables — red plastic top, sticky with spilled beer — and without missing the beat of her one-line refrain, sang: “Sun is so hot, we slept.” In black stiletto shoes, she lurched from table to table, clearly far gone on something, accompanied only by the cello’s steady, sawing pulse.
She kept moving. Some tables were slick with stout, some crowded with half-finished pints and uncleared glasses. A few tipped. Glass hit the floor and shattered. But she didn’t. She rode the wobble, found her balance, and went on, the lyric looping like a dare.
When she finally circled back to the band and stepped down, the release in the room was almost physical — hers, ours, everyone’s. The rest of the band crashed in behind her, and the pub joined the chant as if it had always belonged there:
“Sun is so hot we slept.”
Strange, surreal, a little edgy — the Berlin band felt completely at home in West Cork.