Starsailor at The Academy, Dublin on Thursday December 4th, 2026

Starsailor frontman James Walsh must be one of the most likeable men in music. Modest to the point of being almost embarrassed by his fame, he’s the anti-rockstar, as the snider side of the 2000s NME brigade once made a point of telling him ad nauseam. His band, critical observers insist, are sappy, and “lack edge.” The mistake, of course, is the rather teenage belief that all music has to have sharp edges. Instead, Walsh deals in bearing his very soul to a pleasant melody, and he does it really quite well.

Recently, incidentally, the frontman has been blending Starsailor life with playing solo. He knows little else aside from music, having started the band as a teenager, and says, over the course of 25 years, his voice has improved, but narrowed in range. Live, it quickly becomes clear that the vocal is, by some distance, the band’s core asset. While the rest of the band are no doubt essential to the songwriting process and provide a more than pleasant backdrop, live they could almost be anyone. Walsh couldn’t: he sounds uniquely and beautifully himself.

There’s a nostalgia about tonight’s show, one that’s inevitable given its status as a 25-year memorial. Opening with perhaps their biggest hit, a powerful ‘Alcoholic’, is brave almost to the point of a little abrupt, especially with ‘Poor Misguided Fool’ offered as a direct follow up. Both sound very much like the record, though perhaps with Walsh’ vocal still more to the fore, rumbling as it does off the walls of the mid-sized Academy.

Wholesome and heartfelt is a running theme, like in the declarations of love found on a bright-sounding ‘Fidelity’, the grasp to hold on to a dubious relationship that is ‘Best Of Me’, or even the vocally-outstanding sing-along cover of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’.

‘Where The Wild Things Grow’, one of the band’s newer offerings, has this gorgeous swirling dynamic that offers a change of pace for the band, who awkwardly pause to compare their relative levels of Irishness between songs. New material is very much pushed to the back of the line tonight generally. It largely hasn’t broken through into the mainstream consciousness, but this particular track has an epic feel, sweeping and soaring.

There’s another well-chosen Fab Four-themed cover in ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ at the start of the encore. Things then skyrocket quickly with two of the band’s loudest and most engaging tracks in a gloriously plodding yet powerful ‘Silence If Easy’, and the song that arguably should have been their biggest hit, the pounding screech into the emotional ether that is ‘Good Souls’.

‘Good Souls’ is a throbbing track, somewhat out of sync with Starsailor as a whole. In fact, it has a light bang of ‘Ok Computer’ era Radiohead (and yes, we know exactly how much some of you will hate that assertion) coupled with the mellower corners of Primal Scream’s catalogue. It almost goes full wall of sound. The closing track should, really, have been Starsailor’s moment.

The Wigan act are not a nostalgia act yet, but they do come across like one at times, placing such a heavy focus on old material and covers. To be fair to them, that’s almost certainly what the audience wants, and it makes for a great night, especially when it’s done so well.

This band are, in short, exactly what we all know is written firmly on the tin. Heartwrenching, really well put together, and easy-going. What they’re not, particularly, is an act that adds much to their recorded offering live, or feels particularly dynamic. In that context, the recent exploration with strings makes a whole lot of sense.

Even for a nostalgic show, two covers and ten songs from albums that are now 24 and 22 years old respectively (making up three quarters of the set) feels heavy on the early days, which, it turns out, is somehow both an asset (that voice), and somewhat dully predictable.

Being exactly what you sell yourself as is absolutely fine, and Starsailor do that part really well. Bringing things to the next level live is something they’re less good at: it’s all a little static, a little obvious, a little too about simply singing old songs really well.

Ultimately, we have fun, and we respect the gorgeous power of that vocal, but we also find ourselves wishing there was a little bit more here than simply hitting all the right notes. While the voice and the heartache are superb; the show as a whole feels just a touch stale.