If you're a singer/songwriter on stage with just an acoustic guitar for company, there are essentially two methods of capturing the attention of your audience. You can either bludgeon them into submission with ferocious displays of intensity and vitriol, slashing strings as you go. Or you can seduce them through humour, sentiment, and old fashioned bedsit love songs.
Kieran Goss might go for the softer option, but it's one that works. He knows his audience, and he knows his audience knows him, and if that means no tension, very little dynamics and a rather treacly (but by no means patronising) dialogue between the participants, then so be it.
Once you're aware of what's in store, however, you can't help but enjoy it. It's easy listening of the highest order, with the occasional song (mostly from his new album, Worse Than Pride) precisely pin-pointing both the vice and the virtue of being in love. Goss is also a natural raconteur, making his between-song patter a definite cut above the usual drab musings we normally get from "serious" singer/songwriters. He might ramble, but there's always a punch line.
Similarly, while some of his songs fail to connect, but if one doesn't another one comes along quite soon that drives the point home.
Kieran Goss continues his Irish tour tomorrow night at the Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo; on Thursday at Backstage Theatre, Longford; and on Friday, April 24th, at Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford.
