IT HAS been more than seven years since Suzanne Vega last played in Ireland, but judging by the near capacity audience that turned up to see her at the Olympia on Friday evening, it's as if she had never been away.
Vega showed up in a smart designer outfit, flanked by four men in disheveled black who accompanied her as and when the songs required. Bassist Michael Visceglia, guitarist Steve Donnelly, drummer Pete Thomas, and keyboard player (and husband) Mitchell Froom provided the structural flesh for the bones of Vega's songs, many of which punctured the perceived opinion of the writer as the archetypal, dryly intellectual, New York bohemian.
There were other moments, too, when Vega cleverly shattered the same myth in particular, the anecdote regarding her pavement meeting with Bono some years ago. The sly telling of this situated her not so much left of centre but rather bang in the middle of a cultural divide.
Similarly so the music, which was a strict mixture of Suzanne solo and Suzanne backed by her band. This stylistic dichotomy between her early folk oriented music and the more recent jazz/bass heavy material from her new album, Nine Objects Of Desire, jarred occasionally.
The infrequent awkwardness of the arrangements, though, were offset by the song lyrics, most of which bordered on the provocative.
The biggest cheers of the night were saved for her more well known songs (Marlene On The Wall, Luka, Tom's Diner), but the respect afforded the newer material boded well for Vega as an artist that will probably always deliver, irrespective of long absences. Nothing too exciting, then, but a very good example of intelligent, modern folk music played with a lot of instinct and no small degree of fun.
