MARTIN STEPHENSON

MARTIN STEPHENSON (Whelans, Dublin)

How full was it? Very, very full. So full that if, say, you were clumsy enough to drop the pen you were making notes with, there was absolutely no chance of being able to bend down and pick it up again. So full, that once you kicked your way, politely, through to the front, there was no possibility of getting back to the bar until the set was over. And how good was it? Well, so good, that even without any double Bacardis (the drink of the gods), it provided the best hour and a half’s entertainment since the last omnibus edition of Brookside.

There’s nothing to look at; no band, no lighting display, just Martin, his guitar, and, for reasons that would have been immediately obvious if I was more spiritually enlightened, a candle. But then, the audience is here just to hear the songs, an idea that may soon catch on in other venues.

The audience is also here to join in at the slightest encouragement, and Martin encourages us a lot because he has always been the personification of Mr Nice Bloke. He talks and jokes continually, interrupting his first song, ‘We Are Storm’, to remark on the video screen that is hanging above him, projecting his smiling face for the benefit of those who weren’t ruthless enough to make their way down the front. “I feel like the lead singer of Talking Heads, except that he is taller and more Greenwich Village’, he sings, without interrupting the flow.

It’s the kind of concert where people call out the songs they want to hear and, with one or two exceptions (there’s no ‘Boat To Bolivia’ or ‘Little Red Bottle’), he immediately obliges. So we get to hear a perfect rendition of the fragile, elegant ‘Rain’, to sing along with ‘Colleen’ and sing along even louder with a tender ‘Wholly Humble Heart’ that at one point disintegrates into ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, (that may have been taking the joke a little too far, but still . . .) and to shuffle about to ‘Running Water’. We get ninety minutes worth of unpretentious songs sung by a voice that is sensuous and utterly beguiling. In retrospect, that’s probably even better than last week’s Brookside.

• Lorraine Freeney