I first came across John Grant after hearing Blackbelt played on the embattled Phantom 105.2 and I was instantly hooked by the song’s unrelenting beat, gravel tones, and visceral lyrics.
Since then, Grant’s Pale Green Ghosts has repeatedly been voted the best album of 2013 and I have waited six months to see him perform live after snapping up tickets for his date at the Olympia Theatre last October. Sometimes a long lead-in to a gig can leave you with overly heightened expectations and destined for disappointment but no matter how excited the holders of tickets for Monday night’s sold-out gig were, I am confident that they could not have predicted the eventual outcome.
From the moment that Grant walked out on the stage, the audience collectively swooned at his witty banter, easy stage presence and ability to take a few unplanned hitches in his stride. The first chords of a stripped-back version of You Don’t Have To set the tone for the night, with the American singer’s powerful vocal reverberating through the venue.
While Vietnam was thrown slightly during to monitor problems, Grant and the band recovered well and plunged straight into a showcase of some of the Pale Green Ghosts’ finest moments. Admittedly, I’d been keeping my fingers crossed that Sinead O’Connor, a good friend of Grant’s, would make an appearance and replicate her haunting back-up vocals and the cheers from the audience when she appeared on stage dressed in a casual cardigan and woolly hat would suggest that I wasn’t the only one.
The duo took on It Doesn’t Matter To Him and, as witnessed at Electric Picnic, the result was beautiful, as Grant’s deep baritone blended with O’Connor’s soaring runs. It was when the former Czars’ frontman launched into a particularly vocally acrobatic version of Blackbelt and, later, a stunningly brutal take on GMF that I began to worry if the gig was going to peak too soon, with many of my most anticipated moments already included on the setlist.
Silly me. Throughout the show, Grant had paid tribute to Ireland’s great stable of musicians, tipping a hat to Damien Dempsey at the beginning and teasing that the Dublin balladeer may join in at some point. But while the Your Pretty Smile singer wasn’t in attendance, there has something much better left to come: a three-way harmonised version of Glacier with Sinead and Conor O’Brien from Villagers.
When the Meteor-award winning singer came to the stage, I heard a girl nearby turn to her friend to say ‘this is the best Christmas present ever!’ and it certainly felt like all my Christmases had come at once as I listened, dumbstruck at the magical performance unfolding in front of me. I cannot overstate how exceptional this moment was but I certainly felt I had got more than good value for my ticket price with that song alone.
However, the train kept on rolling, with plenty more treats in store including a blistering version of Queen of Denmark with Sinead, a string of both rocky and subtle tracks spanning Grant’s solo career and a beautiful duet of Abba’s Angel Eyes with Conor, before hitting the perfect note to close with a cover of Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces.
Despite playing for almost two hours, Grant seemed reluctant to leave the stage and the crowd were certainly reluctant to leave behind the musical utopia that he had created in the Olympia. While I’m currently gazing at tickets for upcoming performances from the likes of Robert Plant and the Arctic Monkeys, I think it’s a fairly safe bet to nail this one down as one of the gigs of the year.
