Dermot Kennedy’s incredibly popular default has a vibe: sensitive, riddled with beautiful poetic lines, and soulful. It’s also big on pop bombast, the kind of music that, as presented on record, instinctively feel like it belongs with a massive light show and high-volume sing-alongs. It’s all polished production, slick music videos, gentle beats and massive vocals. There is nothing, at all, wrong with that, but it’s also a far, far cry from what we get tonight.
The ‘A Promised Return’ tour is specifically labelled as intimate – and yes, Kennedy is firmly in the territory where intimate feels like a reasonable description here, even for the 3Olympia. That doubles as an opportunity for our homegrown star to do something entirely different, and that feels instinctively like an opportunity he is determined to maximise.
Stood in front of a set of diffuse lamps and a stage backdrop set up like the pages of a book, Kennedy is backed – even at the set’s most boisterous – by violin, double bass, piano, and keys, and lets his vocal shine relatively unaccompanied throughout. And we all knew that vocal was good, but just how good quickly becomes apparently: minus the (admittedly beautiful) musical clutter, the power of those euphoric highs and moody lows shine through, and the slight edge of vibration found in the deepest notes resonates through the Olympia.
Of course, many of Kennedy’s songs are about himself and his life, and he takes breaks, at times, to tell us the stories behind them. ‘Two Hearts’ is not such a song: it’s about a love that’s broken apart and then pulled back together much later, but he admits that in hindsight it resonates more with his own life than he felt at the time he wrote it. It’s not a song that’s garnered much acclaim, but in the new, sparser set up, feels like an almost Jeff Buckley-tinged classic. ‘Innocence and Sadness’ talks of the intersection between being required to ‘adult’ and life losing a bit of its lustre, and comes on slow, another soul poem, with lines like “better savour every minute as it flies by.”
This is a pattern for the evening. There are tracks here that don’t particularly stand out on the records, but shine in the new setting. ‘Let Me In’ – the title line also the most stunning of refrains – is a huge stand out on the search for happiness, on which Kennedy’s vocal shines amid the delicate anguish, and the witless crowd banter that characterises some of the shows’ earlier moment feel almost like it’s been stunned into silence. On the track, Kennedy looks briefly like it might all get away from him, and the emotion in the venue is weighty. We’re exploring the back catalogue through its quieter corners, and away from the other side of the coin and set alone, they feel outstanding.
The set still has some hits, of course. ‘Better Days’ message of hope is gorgeous in a sparser form, and ‘Power Over You’ perhaps the only nod to a true full-on power ballad all night, still feels beautifully punchy minus the louder backdrop. Then there’s ‘Outnumbered’ – the standout signature tune in the absence of ‘Giants’, which is left out of the set entirely – and a track that performed with this kind of passion feels like a heartfelt personal promise. Love songs are a pop staple, but they feel like they mean more when their surrounded by anguish and set into the kind of lyrical storytelling colour that Kennedy has made a staple.
There is the odd moment where Kennedy nods to that arena scale production, too, but its only occasional. The synths are used, for example, to provide that Moby-esque layering on a humming and spacey ‘Moments Passed’, almost incongruous in its similarity to the version on record, a moment where we feel like we’re back at a more traditional Kennedy show. That’s offset entirely by the rootsy feel of tracks like the closer ‘Carrickfergus’, a startlingly beautiful and delicate offering that has much in common with the Clancy Brothers’ 60s version, aside from with Kennedy’s distinctive vocal brought once again to the fore.
It feels, in a sense, like Kennedy is not particularly here to please. If anything, he’s here to deliver a different vision of himself, one that sits somewhere between the road-testing of a new dynamic and an experiment in whether it’s possible to play like you’re wrenching hearts out in the pub, but do so in front of an audience of over a thousand. There’s no compromise, no particular nod to fan favourites.
Instead, there’s a focus on artistry, overall feel, and perhaps even a light self-indulgence about it all, riffing off the idea that these smaller shows give space for creative adjustment. Several times, he has us close to tears. Several more, we wonder if we’ve pegged him wrong this whole time. It’s a conscious decision to be this gentle version of self, one that evokes stark imagery, like living in a rain-cloud, dripping in foggy darkness but looking out at the light.
“That was a load of shite”, someone comments to me on the way out. If you came here for the euphoric pop version of Kennedy, then yes, perhaps it misses the mark, but if you can connect with him in a new form, it all makes a whole lot of sense. This was starkly beautiful, a refined and delicate version of the singer that bears more resemblance to someone like Villagers than his usual chart style.
It’s poetic, tearjerking, and thoughtful. For us, this raw unveiling of the heart might have been edging close to morose at times, but it was also a new lens through which to look at one of Ireland’s brightest stars, Unexpected, differently, and incredibly toned down. But also, quite emphatically, the very opposite of shite. In fact, it’s the kind of show that makes you wonder if you can actually watch Dermot Kennedy play a more conventional arena show again: as good, if not better, than anything we’ve ever seen him do.