Live Report: Eels at Iveagh Gardens, Dublin

On the night Brazil and Neymar were sent packing from the World Cup, Eels were paying tribute to another diminutive figure with a big reputation. Two songs in and these supposed arch-moochers were lolling through a cover of Prince’s Raspberry Beret, which they later followed with a playful tilt at the purple pop god’s When You Were Mine. It was that kind of evening.

The walk to and from Iveagh Gardens was surreal, the streets heaving with downcast Brazilians who’d just seen their team handed their figurative unmentionables by Belgium. Upon reaching the venue there were surprises too – most notably, frontman Mark Oliver Everett’s pratfalling demeanour.

Here was a singer who has supposedly spent the past 30 years carrying the weight of a deeply tragic family history on his shoulders (when his famous scientist father died, it was Everett who discovered the body; later he lost close relatives to 9/11).

Clearly he’s concluded that, rather than crying, he might as well laugh. The jokes kept coming – with a new band member serenaded on Little Joe! and Everett cracking wise about his height (the other musicians, he explained, made him look short – something Prince would have never allowed).

Still, beneath the bonhomie you could sense the starkness and darkness. Everett recently returned from a four year hiatus from music, with well received new LP The Deconstruction.

However, the concert was as much about glancing backwards as living in the now. A dip into a catalogue yielded 1996 hit Novocaine For the Soul, Everett’s plea for comforting numbness to blanket the hurt.

He further addressed his demons on My Beloved Monster, an exploration of depression in which the black dog was portrayed as almost benign – a companion who had trailed the singer through his life (you may remember it from psychological art-house flick Shrek).

But unlike Brazil, there was a happy ending of sorts in the shape of Mr E’s Beautiful Blues – a celebration of defiance and pushing through the pain. With night stealing in, the song was suffused in weariness yet with a beacon of light at its heart.