A selection of reviews by Irish Timescritics
Andrea Bocelli
O2 Arena, Dublin
THE JUGGERNAUT that is Andrea Bocelli Inc is a formidable piece of machinery. Capable of filling the O2 in the time it takes him to sing the opening notes of his gargantuan Con Te Partirò (Time To Say Goodbye), it plies a trade in a repertoire so soporific it could be bottled and sold as an anaesthetic.
This was a pedestrian performance that ticked all the boxes but satisfied few appetites for music with spirit or soul. Bocelli engages with his music with lawyerly precision, but rarely risks digging anywhere beneath the surface to inhabit the melodrama inherent in his repertoire. Without a single verbal exchange with his (rapt) audience, Bocelli was bereft of the simpatico that defines exceptional lyric tenors from José Carreras to Pavarotti. Sporadically he let the timbre of his voice find full warm expression, and in Lara’s Granada he seemed to have finally reached a peak, only to retreat warily from its successor, The Merry Widow.
Acoustically, the O2 served him well, the clamshell shape encompassing Bocelli’s voice with deferential ease. Oddly, for a venue so recently rehabilitated, the limited view of the backdrop (with its occasional film footage), from this writer’s vantage point, meant it was impossible to gauge what Bocelli was seeking to achieve. Surely such frustrations shouldn’t have to be tolerated by punters who shell out countless greenbacks for Bocelli concert tickets? The evening plodded on at a workmanlike pace, Bocelli’s colour-by-numbers repertoire (the first half in particular laden down by an overdependence on Bizet’s and Puccini’s masterpieces from La Bohème, Tosca and Carmen) delivered with all the commitment of an errant parent behind in his maintenance payments.
The underemployed baritone, Gianfranco Montresor, infused the evening with a richer, more finely modulated presence, and soprano Paola Sanguinetti brought a cleartoned freshness that belied her long-term collaboration with Bocelli.
Accompaniment from the Wexford Festival Orchestra was adequate but, again, it was as if they had barely made their acquaintance with Bocelli before the lights went down. A disappointing exercise in corporate entertainment: parched and bereft of a smidgen of creative excitement. ANGELA LONG
The Gaslight Anthem
The Academy, Dublin
There is a fine line between being influenced by a great artist and just mimicking a great artist, and it’s never entirely clear which side of the line much-admired New Jersey rockers The Gaslight Anthem inhabit. Being from the Garden State, of course, their inspiration comes in the form of Bruce Springsteen, that guitar-slinging embodiment of masculine American values whose deification continues apace.
From Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible to The Hold Steady to these guys, the Boss’s rhythms and tunes and throaty roar and working-class tropes have engendered a subgenre all of their own.
At times, this performance is an eerily accurate replica of a Springsteen show, but lead singer Brian Fallon is the genuine article, an energetic and charming frontman, with inky arms descending from his short white T-shirt sleeves, the veins in his neck permanently bulging from the effort of it all. Between songs, when Fallon tells us about his working-class Jersey upbringing, his hardworking Irish father and Polish mother, the pride is palpable – if Fallon wasn’t singing Springsteenesque songs, he’d be a character in a Springsteen song.
Just as Bruce inspires tremendous devotion, The Gaslight Anthem provoke an indelible loyalty, reinforced by that precious perception that everyone has discovered the band for themselves. The result is an adoring crowd who leap and sing and laugh and clap at all the right moments. The entire show, the last of their European tour, is played with the enthusiastic brio of an encore, and all four band members display jugular-straining commitment and lung-bursting enthusiasm.
That said, their strict adherence to the Springsteen template prevents them from being truly interesting in their own right, their frame of musical reference too confined to surprise, but they just about manage to turn their very predictability into a strength, a brazen mark of quality even.
Shameless impersonators or authentic artists? You could spend time trying to figure that out, but you'd be better off just enjoying this damn fine gig. DAVIN O'DWYER
