Eric Cantona Sings When He's Winning

In the same week that Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood watched in the stands as Barcelona took Real Madrid on in El Clásico wearing shirts emblazoned with the Stones' lips logo, a footballer encroaches on their territory when Eric Cantona makes his singing Dublin debut in a packed out Liberty Hall.

Resplendent in a battered trilby, black trenchcoat, billowing white shirt unbuttoned enough to see the Native American tattoo on his chest, red designer trackie bottoms and matching Timberlands, the Frenchman proves to be as commanding on stage as he was on the pitch.

He's joined by two classically trained musicians who also know their jazz and rock 'n' roll chops - the latter with his loops and FX pedals reminds us of former This Mortal Coil and Therapy? man Martin McCarrick.

The early part of the set is very Serge Gainsbourg-y with Cantona's gravelly baritone on the likes of 'We Drive' and 'The Friends We Lost' also redolent of Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Best of all is 'I'll Make My Own Heaven', a real ear-worm of a tune which finds the former Man U no. 7 acknowledging that, "I've been heroic/ I've been criminal/ I've been angelic/ I've been infernal."

Halfway through things go, well, a bit bonkers with 'Mi Amor' a Latino-flavoured reflection on his new life in the Colombian city of Cartagena; the Sex On The Beach-fuelled 'Nowhere (Bang Bang)' straying into Scott Walker territory; and 'Where Love Is Hanging Out' raiding David Bowie's Aladdin Sane title-track for its avant-garde piano stylings.

Switching effortlessly between English, French and Spanish, the lyrics are often impenetrable but always heartfelt. Luckily there's a set-list and lyrics book for everyone in the audience, so I can tell you with 100% accuracy that 'Where Love Is Having Out' such couplets as, "The scents of night live/ On the dancers' bodies/ Intoxicate with unusual/ With oxidised blades/ The ones who are torn/ Drunk with love/ With dark presences/ And mysteries."

There to worship the footballer rather than the serious musician Eric's so obviously determined to become, a group of lads keep breaking into Cantona terrace chants – which their hero deals with in the most gracious of fashions – but are eventually sssssshhhhhhhed into silence by the rest of the audience who seem happy to go on this somewhat surreal journey with him.

With his I'll Make My Heaven EP out now and an album to follow, we could soon be talking about Eric Cantona the singer who used to play a bit of football rather than the other way around.