It’s been a long and eventful journey for Michael Stafford - aka Maverick Sabre - since he first began rapping in 2008. The 21-year-old started out making cameos on various underground hip-hop albums (Terawrizt, Jermicide and Danny Diggs, and later, Professor Green), but came to prominence in his own right with 2010’s free debut mixtape, The Travelling Man. A collection of gritty garage stylings, it established Maverick as an exciting new urban Irish talent.
And as tonight’s show demonstrates, the singer is more in demand now than ever. Following a stellar warm-up show from the Working Class Records crew (Lethal Dialect, Costello and G.I. all perform) Maverick takes to the stage with full band, and opens up with The Travelling Man’s ‘Memories’. And as he performs tracks from that and latest album Lonely Are The Brave, it’s clear to see why these days he opts for singing over rap. Addressing the crowd, his accent is one-part London cabbie, two-parts Wexford farmer, but close your eyes when he sings, and the Academy could (almost) be a dark and smoky New Orleans bar. Only a brave man would attempt Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, but Maverick nails it. His own ‘I Can Never Be’ is equally evocative, while a solo acoustic performance of ‘They Found Him A Gun’ demonstrates how polished the singer has become in the last couple of years. He finishes with the more chart-friendly, Portishead-samplng ‘Let Me Go’, returning for the encore with fan fave ‘I Need.’ Impressive stuff.