Lewis CapaldiMarlay Park, Dublin\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606<\/p>\n
CMAT<\/a>\u2019s star is rising so quickly that seeing her as an opening act now feels like catching something rare. On a sunny Tuesday evening in Marlay Park<\/a>, she arrives in red tights and a dress with newspaper print. \u201cI\u2019m from Dublin slash Meath,\u201d she shouts. <\/p>\n She\u2019s a superabundantly talented performer on home ground, and she\u2019s playful with the audience, getting us doing the Dunboyne Co Meath two-step. When she spots one reluctant participant she singles him out. \u201cEven you with the hat,\u201d she sings. \u201cYou\u2019re still not doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n For an hour she delivers her gorgeous, glittering, country-inflected pop songs. I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby! is the height of the performance, a witty and weird elegy about modern life that has most of the audience singing even the prechorus: \u201cAlways the cowboy, never the cow. I hate the way my life turned out.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0Lewis Capaldi at Marlay Park: Set list, ticket information, how to get there and moreOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n At first glance CMAT and Lewis Capaldi<\/a> make little sense together. But both succeed for similar reasons: authenticity and a lack of interest in being cool.<\/p>\n Capaldi takes to the stage in black jeans and a black T-shirt, and starts straight away with Hollywood, a newer song about the alienation that comes with fame. His vocal delivery is impressive, and there are no elaborate visuals or stagecraft to distract from it. The set list is star-studded: Grace, Bruises, Wish You the Best, Pointless, Before You Go and The Day That I Die are all rendered faithfully, his voice charged with emotion, and the crowd sings back every word.<\/p>\n In a world oversaturated with gravelly-voiced earnest balladeers, what makes Capaldi not just likable but believable? It\u2019s the feeling that there\u2019s nothing cynical about him. He never seems to have wanted to be a superstar, or particularly enjoyed it once he became one. He took a two-year hiatus, struggles with stage fright, is often visibly anxious and crying at his own gigs, and lives with Tourette syndrome<\/a>. He\u2019s open with his fans about all of it.<\/p>\n His songs are crowd-pleasers. Someone You Loved is apparently the most-streamed song ever in the UK. Yet he\u2019s not a critical darling. More sophisticated \u2013 or just irony-poisoned \u2013 listeners find his songwriting gauche and simplistic; his songs can feel indistinguishable from one another. They\u2019re often built from the same toolkit: familiar piano-led chord progressions, melodies that climb steadily towards a cathartic high note. And it\u2019s true that he trades in cliche.<\/p>\n But, when you\u2019re standing in Marlay Park, the cliches layer into something moving. Because no matter how unique you\u2019d like to believe any romance is, it always comes down to the same universal facts: when I was with you, it felt like nothing else. I hate to think of you with someone else. I loved you and it hurt when you left. (Although a good proportion of the crowd is far too young to have experienced such romantic anguish.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s good to see Capaldi doing well. He\u2019s relentlessly charming, a foul-mouthed Scottish lad, self-aware about his material, and very funny. \u201cMosh pit,\u201d he jokes before launching into another sad piano ballad.<\/p>\n