He’s been “dreaming of the future,” has Michael Stipe. “Both the near and the distant – I can never tell them apart.” It’s a revelation (of sorts) – explaining just why exactly it's taken him and his mates nearly 25 years to get to Belfast. Everything, it seems, is relative.
“What kept you so long?” he shouts out at us. Cheeky sod.
Tonight, Stipe looks like The Riddler – pipe-cleaner thin, all legs and hips and frozen Ka-Pow poses; while around the eyes, a thick smudge of face paint completes the effect. For a forty-something, he sheds years like his lyric sheets.
Of course, as a young man, the REM singer gave great decrepitude – arcane obsessions, beards, walking sticks, even (crikey) the odd stray tonsure. And there’s a piercing reminder of all this when Peter Buck plucks out the opening notes of ‘So Central Rain’. And its ache is timeless.
For the rest of the show, however, Stipe’s concerns are very much of the moment – meaning (just before ‘I Wanted To Be Wrong’ and ‘The Final Straw’) on-stage denouncements of the Bush crew and a set-list leaning heavily on the post-Monster catalogue.
No-one quibbles when ‘The Outsiders’, ‘Imitation Of Life’, ‘The Great Beyond’ and ‘I Get High’ make an appearance – all songs that have proven that old (three legged) dogs can pick up new tricks. But considering that this lot are responsible for some of the most wonderful music of the last two decades, are ‘I Took Your Name’, ‘Departure’ and ‘The Wake-up Bomb’ really the most effective way of making an introduction?
The Out Of Time/Automatic faves (especially a gripping take on ‘Country Feedback’) provide ample compensation, while a rambunctious karaoke version of ‘Teenage Kicks’ dedicated to John Peel has a touching, goof-ball charm.
“I’ve broken one of my own rules tonight,” Stipe tells us at the end. “I said thank you very much. I only allow myself to say thanks these days…or thanks a lot.”
And how about cheers?