If they are The Answer, what was the question?

"I think initially it was a quest for a good strong name that we all could agree on," says Cormac Neeson, lead singer of the Northern Irish retro rock band, who visit Fibbers next Friday on their Let The Good Times Roll Tour.

"We'd played under six or seven names, when each night we had a different name, and then one day our drummer suggested The Answer. It's served us well as you can't go around, especially in Ireland, being a half-arsed band,"

Their debut album, Rise, has sold 15,000 copies already with its high-energy rock thrust and Robert Plant school of blues vocals. You could call it straightforward rock, but Cormac qualifies that by saying: "It's straightforward to the extent that it's four guys playing in a room and there's nothing else going on, but it's not so much going back to basics as being true to ourselves. People respect that.

"We didn't sign to a record deal until a year and a half ago, and that definitely wasn't a deliberate decision, but looking back, it gave us four years to cut our teeth. Playing three times a week in Ireland, we found our sound, we learned our stagecraft."

The Answer found their answers, and their Rise looks unstoppable. Next Friday's gig has sold out.