As we’re filling up Vicar Street, the venue pulses with conversations and chatter from a crowd full of anticipation. Gregory Alan Isakov takes to the stage, just him, his guitar, and of course, his hat. I’ve been lucky enough to see him play with an entire orchestra in an echoing music hall back when I was living in Portland, Oregon, but here in Ireland Isakov is still more unknown compared to headliner Passenger. There’s a little section of the crowd that knows him well though, and over the murmuring voices a few people begin chanting “Greg, Greg!” For the rest of the audience who doesn’t know him, he soon proves why this patch of the crowd is so loyal. Opening with a track from his 2013 album The Weatherman, “She Always Takes It Black,” it’s clear that he doesn’t need the orchestra this time. It’s the lyrical power of his songs along with his voice that makes it enough.
His last album was recorded with the Colorado Symphony, and the single from that album, “Liars,” has been backed up by the swelling crescendos of violins and cellos, yet this time he decides to play it solo. Instead of the power of an orchestra, Isakov uses his voice, building up the vocals until he lets them fill the silence of the room with a pulsing echo. Though the track is usually performed in a symphony hall, it holds up as a solo performance. He throws in a cover of Reed Foehl’s “Saint John’s Smith Square,” along with some unreleased songs that will hopefully make it onto an album soon.
By the time Mike Rosenberg, who these days is more commonly known as Passenger takes to the stage, the crowd is more than ready to welcome him. It’s been a couple years or so now since we first heard “Let Her Go,” the song that skyrocketed Passenger to the top of the charts, and it seems to be almost an elephant in the room, but Rosenberg addresses it head on. “I really only have one hit single, so if you don’t mind, I’m gonna play it eleven times,” he jokes. “But weirdly, recently as well, there’s been a lot of confusion between “Let Her Go,” and “Let It Go,” from Frozen. That movie fucking ruined my life.” But he’s not sick of playing the song, rather, he acknowledges that he’s rather indebted to it. “But listen, Dublin,” he says, and listen we do, as the crowd ripples with the sound of people shushing each other before quieting down. “Before I wrote that song,” he admits, “my life was very different. I didn’t get to play Vicar Street, I didn’t have an amazing band.” Rosenberg was a busker traveling around for many years before, and you can still hear a sliver of disbelief in his voice at the idea that he’s come so far since then. Given that most of the world has heard that one single in question more than a few times on the radio, you would think that Rosenberg would be sick of just talking about it, not to mention playing it, but when the time finally does come around, he’s as happy to play it as the audience is to hear it.
You would get the impression that the crowd would just be waiting the whole night to hear “Let Her Go,” and be zoning out for the rest of the gig, but this crowd isn’t just here for one song, they sing the words to all of them, sometimes before Rosenberg even gets a chance to. The audience definitely doesn’t think of Rosenberg as just a one-hit wonder, and looking at the rest of the songs, there’s no reason to. Songs like the faster-paced “27” get just the same amount of cheers, though maybe that’s also due to the inspiring message Rosenberg wants the audience to get from the song. “I’d like to dedicate this song to anyone who is doing something with a passion, especially if it’s taking a long time and if it’s frustrating, don’t worry about it, it’s coming,” he says. “This song is “27,” it’s your song, it goes like this.” From that point, he’s unstoppable, stomping around the stage and getting the crowd, even those of us up in the balconies, into it.
Rosenberg doesn’t only talk to the crowd, he characterises us, he turns it into something more like a dialogue. At one point, he’s trying to get us to sing along with him for the chorus of the song “I Hate,” which is obviously a musical expression of various things that Rosenberg, along with most people, hates. He cracks a joke that maybe the song should be called Donald Trump, and it’s safe to say that the audience agrees. The crowd is definitely up for singing along, but just in case a few aren’t, Rosenberg takes the time to get in touch with the whole room. “Dublin,” he says, addressing us as a whole with friendly familiarity, “Listen, I know what it’s like, Dublin, when you go to a gig. First of all, you’re expecting a Frozen soundtrack from start to finish. That clearly isn’t fucking happening, and then this weird guy from England comes out, singing songs, making you all silently cry in the dark, and then suddenly he’s like, hey everyone, sing along, and you’re like, fuck off! But listen, Dublin, I would understand that, I promise you, but for this one song, if you hate the stuff that I hate, if you’re pissed off about what I’m pissed off about, and if you fucking hate Donald Trump, then sing as loud as you possibly can.” Judging by how loud the crowd is singing, we must all really hate Donald Trump.
He does some ambitious covers as well, some that the audience have come to expect. After a couple audience members yelling for “Sound of Silence,” he obliges, with just him and his guitar. It’s an ambitious cover partially because it seems to have been covered by everyone at this point, but this is a crowd at a Passenger gig, and they’re cheering for his version. For those of us who haven’t heard his take on it, we’re not disappointed. It is “Sound of Silence,” after all, and as the crowd is captivated, the room is full of it. Rosenberg uses it to his advantage, letting the silence hang in the air before his voice echoes through the mike and he strums his pick across the strings hard enough to snap all six at once.
That’s not the only cover though, as he plays the Bill Withers classic “Ain’t No Sunshine” for one of his final songs. This is the opportunity for his band to show off, and they do, with fantastic keyboard and guitar solos. For one of his last songs, “Home,” he asks us to get anything that makes a bit of light, and the room is beaming with flames from lighters and flashes from cameraphones. Looking around, it’s as if we’ve transformed Vicar Street into a massive stadium arena. From the way his gig at Vicar Street went, that’s where Passenger’s headed. He's already been at the 3Arena, so before he’s far away on stadium stages, make sure you get a chance to see him at a venue like Vicar Street, where he can tell his stories to the crowd before they sing along.