Paul Heaton
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★☆
“This is a song that makes me equally nervous and proud because I don’t want to sing it incorrectly,” Paul Heaton says about halfway into his 3Arena set, before easing into I’ll Sail This Ship Alone.
His diffidence, 35 years on from the song’s release, is understandable but misplaced. The anorak is gone, as is some of the nonchalance (parts of the set may be designed to give his lungs a breather), but when the crowd thins at the end of the night, everyone keeps muttering that the voice hasn’t changed.
Heaton is from the Billy Bragg school of middle-aged geezers – full of devoted lager socialism predicated on a laudable commitment to his younger self. That lasting sense of self might be owed to the vicissitudes that befell him when The Beautiful South eventually split up (famously citing musical similarities).
For years, Heaton continued making music solo and for years, nobody wanted to know. About 2010, he embarked on a couple of 1,000-mile-plus bicycle tours of pubs and small venues across Ireland and the UK, embracing the new ceiling for his work. There is a similar size and whimsy to his current mission – playing a gig in all 32 Irish counties.
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The 3Arena though, with its capacity of 13000, is more befitting of his catalogue. When the brass section trot onstage, they make up a nine-piece band. Spearheading it is Heaton and his costar, Glaswegian country and folk singer Rianne Downey.
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That influence adds something different. A Little Time, originally sung by Briana Corrigan and Dave Hemmingway in The Beautiful South, invokes John Prine in the Downey and Heaton duet. A chunk of the songs from The Mighty Several, Heaton’s latest album from October of last year, get a run out. He says it’s true that albums are like children, but follows Bob Dylan’s advice to “release it, give it a weird name and then deny it”.
One of the new ones is Small Boats. Heaton lists his influences in pre-production as The Dubliners, The Wolfe Tones and Christy Moore. The result is the sort of bastardised Celtic pop that forever soured Ed Sheeran’s relationship with Ireland. Admittedly, it gets the crowd going.
Location is important. These days, Heaton writes his lyrics in the Netherlands and Germany, inspired by the bleakness of both. In times gone by, Hull was the epicentre of his words and Gran Canaria his music – a juxtaposition that goes some way to explaining the biting, satirical brand of pop music.
Unsurprisingly, the big hitters are highlights. The opening piano line for Song for Whoever is greeted with a warm, collective sigh. Peaks as the set winds down include Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud) and One Last Love Song. They opt then for the brave double encore. Those who commit to an early exit miss Rotterdam (Or Anywhere), Caravan of Love and a cover of Stevie Wonder’s A Place in the Sun.
It is worth mentioning that Caravan of Love itself is a cover of Isley Jasper Isley’s R&B original. It is hard to think of it any other way though, than in its purest Housemartins form. Heaton belts it out with that voice, stretchy and mellifluous, leaving it rooted in everyone’s heads for days to come.
