Imelda May has been on tour since the beginning of April with her Made to Love spring tour, running through April and May with dates all across the UK and Ireland, ending with three dates in her home town of Dublin.
Support in Dublin was Rachael Sage and Niall McNamee.
The Sunday night was the final of the three night run in Vicar Street Dublin and it was a sell-out run of nights, opening the show was Niall McNamee a singer song writer and armed tonight with an acoustic guitar he played a fifteen minute set of tunes while telling a story or two in-between which had the audience laughing loudly.
He has wrote and performed a duet with Imelda that features on Imelda’s new album, something I will come back to later.
He has some UK dates coming up in October which then continues with a string of Irish dates.
All can be found here https://www.niallmcnamee.com/
With no change over to speak about the second act of the night was on stage before we knew it and sitting behind her keyboards and accompanied by a guitarist.
Rachael is also a singer songwriter and a visual artist hailing from New York and played a 30 set of a mix of song where she would either be on the keyboards or guitar and also telling a few stories along the way. At one point telling us of her love for Frida Kahlo, Racheal herself choosing tonight to be wearing an arrangement of flowers in her hair which featured a lot in Frida’s self portraits.
This time there is a bit of change over time as stage is rearranged for the main performance, but this gives folks time to get to the bars and get the drinks in as that bars were to be closed for the duration of Imelda’s performance, which I think is a good thing at seated shows as you’re not having people milling about.
So nine thirty hits and the lights go low, the smokes starts and a voice is heard, It Imelda’s reciting the words to the opening of 11 Past the Hour, during which the band arrive on stage as does Imelda once the band are in position and takes up the singing part, after this we got Levitate / Black Tears / Breathe .
Its was a retrospect set list and a long one at that which was intertwined with lengthy stories from Imelda some of which were about where we are as we are in a part of Dublin called The Liberties one of the oldest parts of Dublin and were Imelda grow up and stating that this is her! turf.
Following on from Breathe came the songs Just One Kiss / Big Bad Handsome Man / Sixth Sense / Solace
then a story of how she remembered her uncle and how he didn’t like watching how Dublin was changing and parts of it being closed off to people which lead into the song The Longing that was followed by a prerecording of a poem The Bird is Dead while Imelda dashed of for a quick outfit change and came back with Human / Different Kinds of Love and its here were I mentioned earlier about Niall writing and performing a song with Imelda we got treated to a live performance of that duet Don’t Let Me Stand On My own.
After which Imelda gave another story of how she loves to read and gets lost in books and how one book leads to another and then leads to another subject and she loses time and how this makes her think about time and the different theories on time being linear or not and how its all the same and the here and now could be the future and the past! so the band started into Never Look Back, Its here where Johnny Got A Boom Boom was on the set list but there was a change as it wasn’t played, it was skipped and Should Have Been You came next, after which Imelda brings on stage her two sisters to join in singing Made to Love.
Its during this where I had to leave as it was getting close to eleven pm and I had a good walk to catch a bus at eleven thirty.
I had been informed by staff that the two previous nights ran on past eleven fifteen, so unfortunately I had known I wasn’t going to catch the full performance.
What was still to follow going by the set list was.
Mayhem (annoyed I had to miss this)
_______Encore_________________
Bat Out Of Hell ( Meatloaf cover?)
Nina Cried Power( Hozier cover?)
Home(Poem with music)
Diamonds
Some where in what I missed! Johnny Got A Boom Boom was played as I have since seen YouTube videos of it from this night.
One last thing the visuals that accompanied this show were amazing with a different projection on to a large backdrop for every song and at one time a large neon sign lighting up behind the backdrop and changing through out the song .
