This is the first of three sold out nights at this venue and just down the road at the less overtly spiritual Lexington. It’s billed as a residency and in a week when there’s a political furore on someone having two or maybe just one or even three ‘primary residences’ it’s a fitting split of locations.
A former Mercury nominee for her powerful 2002 debut album “Night On My Side’” Gemma Hayes straddles a spectrum of supposed categories and has picked up a veritable clutch of Irish music awards down the years. Tonight we hear half a dozen songs from the first album which was a big breakthrough for her profile. Her six albums span over 20 years and she’s previously spent periods in London and on the West Coast USA whilst being in Ireland for much of her life, having been raised in a musical family in Tipperary. Tonight’s audience covers an encouraging age span across three generations, perhaps linked with her career’s longevity as well as the musical breadth itself. There is folk, there is indie rock, there is quirky rock a la Alanis Morissette, and there are pulsing guitar-heavy sounds which chug along in the vein of mid-period Throwing Muses. And across the piece it is truly fine stuff. Her current all-Irish backing band are a polished quartet, (Sam Killeen – guitars; Ross Turner – drums; Ena Brennan – violin, and backing vocals; Cormac Curran – keys and guitars) and you wouldn’t know that they weren’t the original players on the songs which inform the set.
Heading towards autumn, the sky outside the large church windows is fully night darkened as the band start up. ‘Another Love’ opens proceedings, the reverb on Hayes voice, backing vocals and the softly beaten drums giving a haunting hazy feel. It receives a rapturous applause. Her lyrics are refreshingly clear through the set. Before ‘Feed the Flames’ she narrates how the idea came to her after watching Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the film of the intensely fraught “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and when she tried out the freshly composed song on her husband he was horrified as his first thought was that it was describing their own relationship.
‘Ran For Miles’ has its own history, having been played at her first ever gig outside Dublin, in London aged 19, after which Coldplay’s Chris Martin wandered up over a pizza to commend the song’s resonance, which gave her a huge uplift. ‘Ruin’ is another powerfully emotive song – “You can’t wake a girl who pretends to sleep/you make me feel something again,” with keyboards and drums thudding along with the vocal. ‘Tear in My Side’ has the whole band at full throttle and the decibel level probably at the venue’s very top end. This is one of several songs describing how the emotional passion of love can become almost physically wounding in its intensity. ‘Lucky one’ came to her as she watched a David Attenborough documentary on the peregrine falcon, swooping down to catch fish aided by its top flight speed of 250 mph. It’s quite the barrage of psych rock a la Espers or Emma Ruth Rundle. ‘Anything’ is a delightful Adrienne Lenker cover. The support act Lily Lyons rejoins the stage as it’s sung as a stripped-down duet with just one acoustic, the hushed vocals seeming delicate, almost fragile. ‘Let a Good Thing Go’ ramps up the sound again and is a standout to close the main set.
‘Central Hotel’ is the first encore and is one of the very few songs with a specific place setting, with details of post-industrial North West England framing the inner feelings described. ‘Happy Sad’ concludes a striking 90 minute show, it’s the sole song from the second album “The Road Don’t Love You” and the phrase, “I’m happy sad, and it comes easy to me/I’m never one or the other” serves as a reductive summary of Hayes’ work, the ongoing mingling of pleasure and distress that fuels her songwriting.
Lily Lyons is the support, and her half-hour set is rooted in English folk. She plays acoustic guitar with plenty of minor chords and a touch of melancholy in her vocal delivery. The initial demure impression is knocked aside when she introduces her second sing with some choice language. Next up is ’57‘, about harnessing all ones trait’s, including the less virtuous ones, to live fully, and not delaying this until reaching the age in the song’s title. For the final song she shifts to a more upbeat tempo for one of the more overtly catchy songs of the set.
