Conway Savage has lately been spending less and less time as one of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds. Last year he collaborated with fellow Aussie Suzie Higgie (once of Falling Joys) on Soon Will be Tomorrow, an album of ballads somewhat free of the apocalyptic style of his boss.

On Tuesday night, again accompanied by Higgie, he played his first Irish gig. Arriving on stage without any ceremony - Savage and Higgie immediately set the tone with The Letter, a low-key, yearning love song, more in the tradition of American folk music than Australian murder ballads.

And so it was for the 90-minute gig. With Higgie on acoustic guitar and Savage on keyboards, they shared and swapped vocals, chatted to each other as much as to the crowd, and had a very mellow time. The songs - with titles such as Never Going to See You Again and I Trust You Had a Good Time - came across as whimsical rather than tortured. The lack of tension in the music is replaced with a lazy, gentle plodding that is reminiscent of Van Morrison at his most sugary.

Overall, though, this was a satisfying set, and an encore that ended the gig as casually as it began, with Savage quietly intoning his own brand of happy melancholy.