Brendan Perry at Dublin Crawdaddy, 26th May 2010

I thought I’d post a review of the Irish gigs I went to last week.

Brendan Perry had scheduled three gigs in Ireland for the second stage of his 2010 tour to promote his new album, Ark.

For me, it was a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I could fly to Ireland, attend three great gigs and get to see family, too. After 25 years of watching Brendan play live, he practically feels like family, anyway.

This was the first of the three gigs and my anticipation was running high.

The gig had been scheduled to take place in the 1300 capacity Tripod, but the decision was made on the day to move it to the 300 capacity Crawdaddy. The obvious suspicion of disappointing ticket sales was confirmed by venue staff. Apparently, the gig had received almost no promotion and even the posters advertising it had only been put up around Dublin the week before.

Crawdaddy is a tiny room with poor ventilation, so it heats up quickly. The stage is very low, below knee height. People were taking photographs of the set list before the band had even come on stage and I could see from my vantage point that the set list was to be the same as during stage one of the tour, with the addition of one new song.

The tiny venue made the experience like a living-room concert. We were packed in, right up to the front of the stage and the band’s feet were mere centimetres away.

The PA was small and didn’t project the sound very far, requiring that I stand much closer to the speaker than I normally would. The venue was so tightly packed that it would have been hard to stand in a better place, anyway.

The support act was Kila member and ex-Dead Can Dance percussionist, Rónán Ó Snodaigh, who played the bodhrán and talked to the audience, making for a very enjoyable performance somewhere between music and stand-up comedy.

With the crowd suitably warmed up by Rónán, Brendan came on stage smiling and the band launched into The Arcane. I was struck by how little space the band had in which to play. They were standing elbow to elbow across the stage. New keyboard player, Astrid Williamson, was barely visible to anyone standing in the right half of the room, obscured as she was by the PA and a large monitor speaker.

Astrid started to play You Never Loved This City at the wrong point in the set. Brendan sang a couple of lines before he realised the mistake and then abandoned it, causing someone in the audience to remark, “He is human!”, which made everyone laugh.

After This Boy came the brand new song, Tree Of Life, followed by You Never Loved This City proper.

The greatest surprise of the evening came during Voyage Of Bran, the first song of the encore, when Brendan stopped singing, glared at someone in the audience and said, “Shut the fuck up!”

Apparently, a couple of people had been chatting during the song and this had really needled him. With the audience and band almost rubbing noses, it must have been impossible to ignore the chattering.

Unfortunately, he didn’t restart the song, so only about half of it was played this time.

After Spirit, the final song of the first encore, the band left the stage. The crowd fell strangely silent and people started to file out of the room, even though the house lights remained off. Don’t Irish audiences expect or want more than one encore? There was no cheering, clapping or stamping of feet.

I knew from previous gigs on stage one of the tour (and from the set list in front of me) that Severance was yet to come, so I held my ground. I, for one, wanted more.

Suddenly, the band reappeared and people rushed back into the room. It was another strange moment. I heard afterwards that the venue’s security even prevented some people from reentering, presumably because the gig was considered over.

The band must have been a bit bemused by the apparent apathy. They left the stage without further addressing the audience and the evening’s business was concluded.

Musically, the band were in good form and newcomer Astrid seemed to have slotted right into her niche. She grooved from left to right behind the keyboards and provided a welcome distraction from the more static figures around her.

I recorded the concert and it is now available on DIME.