David Gray and Simple Kid live at the Galway Arts Festival

It’s been a long, hot, muggy day, but Galway’s weather still won’t piss or get off the pot. A short, sharp shower would actually be extremely welcome, but the heavily pregnant clouds just tease with the prospect of rain. On the plus side, the evening skies over the Fisheries Field are appropriately shaded for the musical night ahead (sorry, but it’s an unbreakable rule of music journalism that every David Gray live review must contain at least one pun on his surname).
The Arts Festival’s big-top tent isn’t exactly cool inside. There’s no seating, and when Simple Kid goes on, half the crowd is still to-ing, fro-ing and thronging the beer tent. Much of the rest have their backs turned to the stage. Such is the lot of the support act.
Simple Kid certainly looks the part in his slacker uniform of baseball cap, T-shirt and baggy pants. He’s even got his moniker childishly scrawled on a big piece of paper taped to the front of his guitar (presumably lest he forgets which one is his). Once he gets into sonic stride, though, former Young Offenders’ frontman Ciaran McFeely proves that he’s anything but simple.
A hardcore of admirers up the front aside, his eclectic brand of electro folk-pop doesn’t really catch-fire amongst this crowd. But what chance does the Kid have? “We are the twenty-something,” he sings, at one point. In truth, most of this audience are a fair bit older (these are David Gray fans, after all), and so Simple Kid’s hilarious, chemically-inspired wit mostly flies right over their heads – despite the lyrics being displayed karaoke style on the screen behind him.
He’s reminiscent of Moby when he leans over the laptop, and of Beck, when he straps on the guitar and blows his harmonica. But McFeely’s from Cork, so there’s an added sprinkle of twisted genius. In much the same way as Beck hit the bigtime with ‘Loser’, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Simple Kid pulls off the same trick someday soon. He certainly has the goods, as ‘Song of Stone’ and ‘Domestic Cat’ demonstrate.
By the time he finishes his short set with forthcoming single ‘Serotonin’, he’s probably won over enough of the crowd to stuff the Róisín Dubh when he revisits Galway at the end of September. I’ll certainly be going.
David Gray isn’t actually from Galway, but he’s given a rapturous local-boy-done-good reception anyway. As with all of this artist’s Irish performances, there’s such good vibes between crowd and performer that the chances of this being a shit gig are approximately zero.
Gray’s life has been lived in anything but slow motion of late, though he could probably be forgiven for seeing it that way after a straight 19 months on the road (this mammoth tour won’t finish until Canada next month). But he doesn’t come across as frazzled – just consummately professional. He’s even wearing a neatly pressed suit.
He applauds the crowd back, calls out a cheerful “Hello, Galway!” then sits straight to the ivories for ‘Alibi’. When he follows up with a head-shaking – yep, he still does it – ‘Sail Away’, you get the impression that he’s just getting it over and done with. Both he and the five-piece band (which tonight includes cellist Caroline Dale) give the song a little extra something, but you can’t help feeling they’re bored shitless playing it.
But such is the price of being the creator of Ireland’s best-ever selling album. When you sell, sell, sell, you’ve gotta play, play, play.
It’s back and forth between guitar and piano for the rest of the show, as we’re treated to a selection pulled mostly from his last three No.1 albums. Not every song is an automatic crowd-pleaser, and it occasionally wanes a little, but the tempo’s always quickly picked up again with something everybody knows all the words to (i.e. anything off White Ladder). The crowd sing at least 25% of this gig. No wonder the suit jacket stays on throughout.
After ‘Please Forgive Me’ (which comes midway through), the band launch into a wild improvisation that really gets things moving, but not for long. Gray’s more introspective material isn’t the kind of stuff you can throw your arms around to. Every couple in the crowd becomes one for ‘Babylon’.
There’s no real banter until the encore, when he briefly jokes about the city’s uber-stylish new ‘G’ hotel. The highpoint of the encore is a charged ‘Late Night Radio’, which he claims not to have played in a while. The show ends with ‘Hello/Goodbye’ being filmed by a sea of lit mobile phones.
Love him or hate him, David Gray almost always delivers the goods. And so he did. Thank you very much, Mr. Gray. A job well done, and please come back soon.

Pic by Jamie Howard.