This week saw Norwegian Singer-songwriter Marie Ulven also known as Girl in Red make her return to Dublin fir the first time since the pandemic and it was an epic affair.
Support came from US artist Del Water Gap playing only his second ever show outside of the United States. The word phenomenal still feels like an undersell of how good this set was. Del Water Gap was joined by his band on stage with them taking care of Lead guitar, bass and drums while he handled both acoustic and electric rhythm guitar. The set started off fast with high energy for the first 4 songs before bringing the tempo down for ‘Perfume’ during which he jumped into the crowd to sing amongst them for a portion of the song. By the last chorus of this song he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, jumping on demand and loving every second. The last song in the set was ‘An Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat” to which the crowd sang back almost every word, such a great thing to see during a support set. Del Water Gap is definitely an act I will be checking out further and you should too!
Girl in Red started fast an loud with ‘ You Stupid Bitch’ a punky classic which got the crowd going. The lights matched the tone of the song with aggressive strobe lights throughout the song. What a way to start a show. After this song Marie, took a moment to address the crowd explaining why the set was going to be shorter than normal as she is currently struggling with vocal nodes. Next up was ‘Body and mind’, another great song driven my a great bass line and killer riffs. Marie continued the epic energy from the first song bouncing around the stage absolutely loving every moment.
Third song up was her hit ‘Girls’ a great song to be so early in the set and the first song in which Marie picked up her telecaster to provide rhythm parts. Marie also played ‘ We fell in love in October’ next in which the crowd found even louder singing voices absolutely screaming back to her! From this song on the crowd were at 100 and didn’t stop for the rest of the show!
‘hornylovesickmess’ and ‘bad idea were played back to back with bad idea picking up the tempo and leading to even higher energy which I didn’t think was possible. ‘Bad Idea’ was definitely a highlight of the set for me such a great song! Next Marie got the crowd to chant which of course led to chants of ‘Ole Ole Ole’. The band also took up an Irish flag during this which was a nice touch. She introduced the next ‘dead girl in the pool’ by saying ‘for the next song we all gotta jump’. The crowd certainly did what they were told and jumped, giving a very punk vibe while doing so. Maries ability to sing while jump was extremely impressive and was displayed during this song.
The energy was brought down a bit for ‘Midnight Love’. The lights were also more subdued which was a nice touch. During this song Marie noticed someone had fainted in the crowd and stopped the song in order to get them help. She also threw her her own water bottle down which was a nice thing to do. The band then took a step back to finish the song with just Marie and Keys finishing off the song.
The night finished with ‘Did you come?’ and ‘ I wanna be your girlfriend’, two Girl in Red classics which finished the night off beautifully. Marie’s commentary throughout was really genuine and funny . This showed her own personality, a great thing to see at a live show.
Girl in Red was such an epic show from start to finish completely justifying her completely sold out European and US tours. She is definitely someone you should try and catch when the opportunity arises if you are into indie rock and even punk! One of the best shows I have had the pleasure of seeing in a while!
