The Academy, Dublin
He's morphed from enigmatic shoe-gazer to the most cosmopolitan prince of darkness in two short years. And if the songs on his new album, Bella, are a barometer of his past and present, Teddy Thompson's been busy living it up, down and every which way in the interim.
Support, David Ford, plied an impressive trade in one-man-bandship, pitting guitars, percussion and keyboards beneath his vocals for State Of The Unionlike an artist layering paint layer upon paint layer, all the better to eviscerate the heart of the song from its innards.
Teddy Thompson has had a soft spot for soaring country that stilled his jagged-edged heart on 2007's Up Front And Down Low. Monday night he gave us a peek into a brave new world of his own making: a place where his country roots coalesce with his folk and rock instincts, sloping into shapes both mesmerising and intensely brooding.
In Teddy’s world, trust is as elusive a commodity as fiscal rectitude was around these parts in the height of the boom.
Playing with a drum-tight four-piece band, his new material shimmies into blinding light, its well-deep maw a sign of how much Thompson has matured as a writer. Delilahwears its troubled heart puzzlingly lightly, but it's Tell Me What You Want, with its Rufus-inspired soaring vocals, that seriously ramps up the voltage, luring the errant Thompson towards operatic heights unimaginable just a few years ago.
“Never wear flannel on stage,” he dryly observes, pumping sweat beneath the lights in his tartan shirt.
His needs, he protests, are as simple as trying to find “someone who turns my bread into buttered toast”.
It doesn't get much more erotic than that, and in between there are heart-sore tales of domestic fracture ( Days In The Park), suicide with a twist ( Turning The Gun On Myself) and cul-de-sac relationships foundering on the rocks of ineptitude ( Separate Ways). What more could you ask for?
– SIOBHÁN LONG
