James Vincent McMorrow at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, 4th February 2014

On the stormiest evening of the year, howling winds and torrential rain whisked ticket holders into the National Concert Hall for the first show of James Vincent McMorrow’s sold out, three-night, homecoming residency.

Slow Skies commenced their mellow support set shortly after eight o’clock, playing under a large white moon, amidst triangles of varying sizes. Karen Sheridan’s voice is enchanting and a highlight of their performance is the contrasting moments of light and shade; the calm sea followed by awesome swells, the latter driven by all band members singing in harmony over thunderous drums.

The hall is plunged into darkness as McMorrow and the band are guided onstage by torch light. The triangles which were white for the support start to glow in a deep blue and get brighter as the harmonic vocal opening develops. “Nice to be here, nice to be home,” McMorrow says. “Beautiful looking room and you’re looking beautiful.”

His soft, sweet falsetto vocals are best heard in Hear the Noise That Moves So Soft and Slow from ‘Early in the Morning’ and Red Dust from ‘Post Tropical’. The vocals “Sometimes my hands don’t feel like my own,” trickle beautifully over layers of synths and keys, with the visuals and music completely in sync. The triangles flicker and dance from one side of the stage to the other, echoing the somewhat light and playful line in Red Dust.

This Old Dark Machine, is an upbeat, older offering, with a chorus enhanced by a prominent bass line and powerful vocals; a pleasant change from the predominant falsetto. The first notes of We Don’t Eat are struck on the keys and yelps are heard from the ground floor before he even has an opportunity to utter the words “This is redemption.”

New songs from ‘Post Tropical’ like The Lakes, All Points and Cavalier are received well yet it is ultimately old favourites such as  And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop and We Don’t Eat that prompt the best reaction from the crowd. It’s difficult to fault the performance of the new material; the intro of The Lakes for example, has a magical, chime-like element to it, evoking images of the sun glimmering over water and is stunningly performed.

McMorrow says the new record is full of “new sounds, but at the end of the day it’s just songwriting”, though the slightly apologetic twinge to this uttering serves to undermine the presentation of the tunes from ‘Post Tropical’ a little. If anything, it’s most likely just a lack of familiarity that prevents the new tunes from hitting a full home run, though this will improve over time as his sophomore album connects with fans in the same way that ‘Early In The Morning’ did.

If you have tickets for the last gig in the National Concert Hall on Thursday, you should count yourself lucky. Expect a mixture of tracks from both albums performed beautifully, spectacular complementary visuals and the odd bit of unexpected funny onstage banter from Mr McMorrow in a beautiful venue.