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Billed in all but name as a rock dinosaur double-header, Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler’s opening show of their joint European tour is no doubt one for blues fans with deep pockets. Blues music- American roots music, in general- flows deep for both Dylan and Knopfler, the latter exploring American roots music more ardently since he left Dire Straits in 1995. Indeed, Knopfler produced and collaborated with Dylan on the latter’s 1979 and 1983 records, Slow Train Coming and Infidels, respectively, at a time when Dylan’s career had hit its nadir and Knopfler was about to break the big time with Dire Straits.

Ahead of the night’s main attraction and performing separately, Knopfler takes to the stage with a band not too dissimilar in sound and feel as Dylan’s. Currently taking time out from recording his next record, Knopfler draws heavily from the solo career he first pursued with 1996’s Golden Heart in a live set that gels well with the sound, songs and feel of Bob Dylan’s records and live shows of the last 10 years. Although those expecting ‘Walk of Life’ or ‘Sultans of Swing’ might have been disappointed by the distinct lack of hits, Knopfler’s folk-leaning roots music shuffles along, opening with ‘What Aye Man’ from 2002’s The Ragpacker’s Dream. Debuted from, presumably, the current sessions for his next record, ‘Corned Beef City’ and ‘Privateering’ both feel fully realised and suggest that his preoccupation with folk / blues / Americana is a long way from being over.

Sauntering onstage to the theatrical and now routine stage announcement that condenses Dylan’s 50-year music career into a matter of sentences, Dylan and his band of session players kick off the night with an excellent rendition of ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’. The dramatic opening is followed swiftly by a restless, shuffling and countrified ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’, which shows Dylan’s voice to be more full, warm and defined than shows of recent years.

Dylan then moves away from the organ, which he has been stood at like Jerry Lee Lewis, and takes centre stage for ‘Things Have Changed’, the song which landed him an Oscar almost ten years ago, to a warm applause. The phrasing, as has been the case with Dylan’s performances for some time, is rapid fire. At times, his delivery is awkward and betrays the studio recordings to the point where it may take time to figure out which song it is he is performing. ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ falls victim to Dylan’s re-phrasing, though, tonight, the chorus retains the melodic punch of the studio recording yet has the Chess Records feel that Dylan has sought on almost all of his records since 1997’s career changing Time Out of Mind.

The junk yard-blues of ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothin’’ is reminiscent of ‘Swordfishtrombones’-era Tom Waits and Dylan gives the set a lift in the right place, only for it to dip again with a pedestrian performance of ‘Spirit On The Water’ from 2006’s Modern Times. However, Dylan and his cowboy band soon gain momentum again with ‘Desolation Row’, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, ‘Thunder On The Mountain’ and ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’ forming a groove in the set that finds Dylan and his band peaking just before the night’s encore.

With Mark Knopfler on the bill, there’s an expectation that he might join Dylan for an encore of Infidels lead single ‘Jokerman’ or perhaps ‘Blind Willie McTell’, a lost Dylan outtake from theInfidels sessions, which Knopfler co- wrote with Dylan. Disappointingly, it doesn’t happen, though Dylan and his merry men take to the stage for an encore of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’, the former which raises the roof off the house, the latter trailing off into mid bursts of blues playing from Dylan’s band.

Dylan’s refusal to engage with his audience means that he doesn’t attract the same adulation, live, which Leonard Cohen, for example, has courted on stage during his touring of recent years. The distance that he keeps from his audience is so that one could sympathise with the steady stream of fans leaving the venue before the night’s end (no doubt insulted by Dylan’s perceived contempt for his audience and frustrated at how foreign the sound and arrangements of some of the songs sound in comparison to studio recordings). What they don’t realise, however, is that though Dylan has appeared to us in many guises, he is still the same uncompromising rebel he always was. Dylan has managed to integrate his vast catalogue of songs to the point where they are all, consistently, in dialogue with one another. Although Dylan’s next move, in terms of recording or completing his long-overdue second installmentChronicles is vague, he will surely continue to play live in the same style and feel as he has for, at least, the last 10–15 years. His success at achieving his singular vision for his songs that he feels he needs to keep the material fresh, coupled with the appetite that he still has to play live, suggests that his so-called Never Ending Tour won’t be winding down anytime soon.

Originally published by State.ie

Setlist for Bob Dylan – Live at The O2, Dublin, October 6th, 2011

  1. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
  2. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
  3. Things Have Changed
  4. Tangled Up In Blue
  5. Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
  6. Spirit On The Water
  7. The Levee’s Gonna Break
  8. Desolation Row
  9. Highway 61 Revisited
  10. Forgetful Heart
  11. Thunder On The Mountain
  12. Ballad Of A Thin Man
    Encore:
  1. Like A Rolling Stone
  2. All Along The Watchtower
Setlist for Mark Knopfler – Live at The O2, Dublin, October 6th, 2011
  1. Why Aye Man
  2. Cleaning My Gun
  3. Corned Beef City (New Song)
  4. Sailing to Philadelphia
  5. Hill Farmer’s Blues
  6. Privateering (New Song)
  7. Song for Sonny Liston
  8. Done With Bonaparte
  9. Marbletown
  10. Speedway at Nazareth

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Villagers have returned home to Dublin after a high profile support slot with Elbow on their latest tour that wraps up tonight, the only Irish date of the tour. A devoted few get in early to catch Villagers. However, in a venue the size of the O2, their set – drawn mostly from slow-burning debut Becoming A Jackal – doesn’t quite connect and one can’t help but feel that this band and these songs belong in a more intimate venue. For a support band, they lack the hooks, choruses and charisma to make an impression on those undecided/apathetic punters who might be here, purely, to see Elbow. The title track elicits the loudest cheer of Villagers’ set, but this wasn’t Villagers’ finest hour.

Walking on stage to a lavish red curtain back-drop, Elbow’s sound of big drums, chunky bass lines, strings and Guy Garvey’s tenor voice, effortlessly fill every corner of the venue. Elbow hit a groove in a set that begins promisingly by opening with ‘The Birds’, ‘The Bones of You’ and ‘Lippy Kids’. As a live band, Elbow has grown leaps and bounds since their May 2001 gig in Temple Bar Music Centre in support of Mercury Prize nominated debut Asleep In The Back. Garvey makes for an unlikely stadium-rock front man. The runway stage into the audience, along with his witty banter in between songs, is a successful attempt at bringing the audience in closer, making the experience more intimate in contrast to the band’s sound. At one point, the remaining band members join Garvey on the runway stage for an acoustic intro to ‘Weather to Fly’ and shortly leave to finish the song with full, electric arrangements. In a way, it’s the most telling song of the night; a song Garvey wrote about the band, its performance here tonight is a visual representation of the how the band have mutated from British music’s best kept secret to where they are now.

The set list, however, finds Elbow on cruise control. They don’t delve too far back into their back catalogue. Instead, they play it safe with a 17 song set that is drawn mainly from Build A Rocket Boys! and The Seldom Seen Kid, with just three tracks from 2005’s Leaders Of The Free World. Their first two efforts – 2001’s Asleep In The Back and 2003’s Cast Of Thousands – weren’t written for the arenas that their most recent records were and therein lies the element of risk: can these early songs work in an arena? It’s a relief, then, when ‘Grounds for Divorce’ arrives during the set; it changes a mood and tempo that has become quite even paced and quite sedate when Elbow should be firing on all cylinders.

Finishing, quite predictably, on ‘One Day Like This’, arms are in the air, and Elbow is home dry. Given that this is their first tour of the arenas, they already seem like old hands in what is a well-co-ordinated show. Here’s hoping that when they hit the festivals in the summer that they’re able to shift gears more convincingly and give a wider representation of their enviable discography.

Originally published by State.ie

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As Irish rugby fans spill out from the pubs and onto the streets after Ireland’s victory over England in Aviva Stadium, a fortunate few make their way down to The O2 amid chants of “Olé! Olé! Olé! Olé!” to catch the cast of The Commitments, live in concert. Celebrating 20 years since Alan Parker’s iconic adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s equally iconic novel, the timing couldn’t be better; a country riddled (again) by an economic recession and a soul and R&B revival in full swing.

As soon as Robert Arkins finishes his rendition of ‘Treat Her Right’, he implores the audience to “Put yer working class hands together for the hardest working band in the world…”. The show well and truly begins when Andrew Strong follows up the excellent introduction with the late, great Wilson Pickett’s ‘In the Midnight Hour’ and Otis Redding’s ‘Mr. Pitiful’, both of which are among the most recognisable songs from the original soundtrack.

Angeline Ball and Brona Gallagher take centre stage for ‘Chain of Fools’ and ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’, respectively. Given that Andrew Strong and Glen Hansard are the only full-time professional singers on stage, it’s a tough ask for two actors to scale the heights of songs originally performed by Aretha Franklin though they succeed admirably. Persuaded by the original cast of the Alan Parker movie to sing a tune, Glen Hansard obliges with a cover of “a Dublin soul song”, namely Phil Lynott’s ‘Old Town’. Complete with finger clicks from the audience, it’s a stunning rendition of a song we all know and it convincingly localises The Commitments more than any other song on the set list.

Played late in the set, the highlights of the night were always going to be ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘Try a Little Tenderness’, the former containing an audacious guitar solo from Andrew Strong (who knew that he also played the guitar?) on Hansard’s guitar and the latter which lifts the roof off the O2. In theory, the night should end here; there’s nowhere left to go after such a peak. Unfortunate, then, that an encore of Little Milton’s classic ‘Grits Ain’t Groceries’ and Spencer Davis’ ‘Gimme Some Lovin’’ falls flat and seems almost unremarkable following on from the set’s peak, although such a lacklustre encore isn’t enough to mar the evening.

A mixed crowd – made up largely of those who saw the film on original release, 20 years ago, and a younger generation who are fans of Amy Winehouse and Plan B – filter out from the O2 after 2 hours of swinging and swaying. The night ends, as it began, with chants of “Olé! Olé! Olé! Olé!”. For one night only, Dublin got her soul back.

Originally published on State.ie