Suzanne Vega – Vicar Street, Dublin – October 22nd 2010
Review by James Hendicott
Photos by Abraham Tarrush
Returning to Irish shores only a few months after a stellar show in the intimate surroundings of The Village’s back room, Suzanne Vega’s gone far bigger this time, cutting a lonely figure alongside her bassist on the sizable Vicar Street stage. Suzanne’s a young fifty, but still looks and performs like a thirty year old. Her back catalogue, however huge, is heavily weighted towards her 20s and 30s in terms of quality, and in the most part, that’s what we’re treated to tonight.
Opener ‘Marlene On The Wall’ is a tribute to a bedside poster of Marlene Dietrich, a German actress who passed away nearly twenty years ago. ‘Gypsy’ is a love song to a camp councilor she hasn’t seen for three decades, and ‘In Liverpool’ her somber impressions of a place she’d long romanticized recorded ten years later. It’s stark and solemn, yet at the same time, still touching after all these years.
If you had one criticism of Vega, in fact, it would be her tendency to be very downbeat and, at times, quite middle of the road. Her spin on even the happy point times in her life is delivered in a style that’s bordering on morose. While any individual song has its moments of clever stylization and minor-key vocals, put it all together and you’ve got a long set – broken up by an old-school drinks break – that has distinctly depressing feel to it. The vibe is that Suzanne knows it, too: she highlights her ‘happiest song’ as ‘Tombstone’, which examines her desire to be buried normally after her mother gave the family dog a Viking funeral. In other words, a show like this is certainly not a pre night-out pep up.
Still, take songs like ‘New York Is A Woman’ (some banter with the crowd concludes that Dublin is also a woman, albeit a slightly
masculine, hairy one) and ‘Frank & Eva’, and you’re shown time and again that Vega has a talent for stringing together off-hand lyrics and charming storytelling into well-woven musical tales. ‘Small Blue Thing’, amongst others, shows her ability to examine the truly abstract.
As a one-off, Suzanne’s charming, inventive and touching, performing pop music as it was before we were invaded by autotune and the need for instantaneous energy. As touching as she is, though, the experience is spoilt slightly by having been at Vega’s show earlier this year. The stories, set list and sound are all but identical, suggesting that – as good as Suzanne Vega clearly is – she’s probably best seen at less regular intervals.
