James Blunt at 3Arena Dublin, 20th November 2014

The crowd is varied at James Blunt: young boys attending with their parents, seasoned couple sitting patiently in their seats for the man of the hour.

Initially, it’s hard to see the appeal: James Blunt is the Jekyll and Hyde of the industry, releasing forlorn ballads such as You’re Beautiful and Goodbye My Lover, while responding to tweets saying “James Blunt gets on my tits”, with, “and finishes in your mouth.”

Before him, however, Gavin James is left to entertain the crowd, and he does so accordingly. His set is polished, his melodies are soft and he never comes across as anything less than a gent. His re-work of Magnetic Fields’ The Book Of Love gets the crowd in to sing-song mode, despite the stripped back nature of the track.

Original songs Coming Home and ‘Til The Sun Comes Up best demonstrate his delicate guitar playing. However, he comes into his own on the final track of his set, a cover of the Louis Armstrong classic, What A Wonderful World.

A crowning disco ball emerges from the ceiling as James Blunt and co. take to the stage. The set is elaborate, with the Space Odyssey theme playing the boys in, and the band dressed in matching grey overalls.

“You’re probably wondering why we’re dressed as electricians”, he tells the crowd, “We’re not – we’ve come as spacemen! You can see we’ve spent a lot of money on this … “

Launching (excuse the space pun), into Face The Sun, Blunt’s vocals quiver and present a completely different person to the man behind the Twitter handle. Paired with rolling drums and atmospheric piano chords make for a surprising, but impressive start.

Blunt is very much running the show, whether he is standing at the piano swaying like the drunk embarrassing relative at a wedding, or triumphantly at the mic stand working the crowd, growling on I’ll Take Everything. He hits the notes, vocally and on the keys. However, he could afford to project his voice more.

Following lots of posing and pointing, Blunt is boisterous in his delivery of Too Late, bending across the stage like a living, breathing Stretch Armstrong. Despite this, he is polished and methodical, like any seasoned performer should be. Leading into Wisemen, even in the depths of a slower song, he grins like a Cheshire cat.

“None of the men will be able to sing this because it’s too high”, he says, referring to High, in a rendition which doesn’t quite maintain the expansive lush qualities of the studio version, but is sweet sounding nonetheless.

Blunt is dry in his humour, which quickly becomes the focal point of the concert. He is self-deprecating about his height, (at just under 5 and half feet) and frequently teases his band. However, he is most confident when performing: be it pop, (the ukelele-heavy Satellites and Postcards) to the saccharine sorrow of Goodbye My Lover.

Blunt pays homage to Slade on his cover of ‘Cos I Love You, displaying varied rhythms accompanied by a psychedelic light show. Cue a rockstar finish, with black silhouettes against screaming white lights.

With an encore consisting of easily forgotten tunes 1973 and Stay The Night, it’s debatable whether it was admirable or tactical to throw You’re Beautiful bang in the middle of the set, and leave these two last. Regardless, he steps up to the plate once again.

James Blunt sees himself as a legitimate rock and roll artist. Whether anyone agrees with this is pretty irrelevant … Well, to him, at least. His approach to performing, however, is refreshing, with unparalleled witty rapport with the crowd. Despite the amount of cheese clogging up his back catalogue, he does have some diamonds in the rough. Certainly, it is impossible to establish any correlation between the sincere soulful James Blunt that appears on stage, and his callous Twitter alter ego.