Jim Carroll witnesses Justin Timberlake at Vicar Street in Dublin.
Justin Timberlake
Vicar Street, Dublin
Two hours after he leaves the stage of a sell-out show at The Point, Justin Timberlake is back in action again. One in a series of post-show club gigs which Timberlake has been doing on this European tour, it's as far removed from his arena extravaganzas as you can get. Bereft of lithe-footed dancers, retina-stretching big screens and show-stopping pyrotechnics, it's left to Timberlake, his band and a bunch of songs to hold a room which is probably as big as some of the hotel-suites he has been calling home.
While post-show jams of this ilk are nothing new (Prince, for one, is a repeat offender in this regard), you don't really expect a former Mickey Mouse Club smiler and boy-band member like Timberlake to be making these moves. Try to picture any of the potato-heads in the boy-bands we know and loath doing something similar and you won't get very far. Indeed, there are many established rock acts who would baulk at giving up their giant lemons and stage-set security blankets to get this close to their audience.
Kudos and an A-grade then to the biggest pop star on the planet for effort and imagination, but he also scores high on other fronts. While it helps immensely that he has a robust and able band to back him, Timberlake is no stooge and he has the charm and the Memphis soul sensibilities to know how a show like this should work. Bar a few early lapses into boy-band chit-chat, the usual showmanship and semiotics are clipped back and the musical prowess comes to the fore.
His songs are the real winners from this gameplan. The opening "Cry Me A River" is barbed and bare, showing teeth and an anger which normally remains well beneath the surface.
A ballad like "Girlfriend" becomes something of a Stevie Wonder out-take when you dilute the usual coating of syrup and saccharine. Crowd-pleasers like "Senorita" and "Rock Your Body" become the stuff of jazzy, funky work-outs, Timberlake hollering and directing out-front like some sort of soul session old-hand.
Just what purpose a show like this serves for Timberlake is something else entirely. Timberlake the pop star may been able to fill The Point countless times over, but it's questionable if Timberlake the groovy, funky band-leader would have been able to do so. Having successfully managed to keep everyone from pop fans to taste-makers onside in 2003 with his shows and "Justified" album, the trick now is to do that all over again.
Pop is the most fickle game of all, but Timberlake seems far too good to lose his way at this stage. If it all goes wrong though, he can at least rest easy knowing he can always put one damn funky club show on the road.
