Poor Bob Wiseman. He plays films on a screen, scoring and sometimes narrating: it’s funny in concept, but not in execution, something out of a small-town community talent show, and it doesn’t help that the air conditioning is drowning him out. He seems like an affable, likeable chap, which is why I want him to get off the stage, go home, and throw out at least half of his McSweeney’s anthologies. Later in the evening, we will learn there’s a piano player inside him, but now I just want it to stop.
Then there’s Leslie Feist, a charismatic song machine who flits between pop and folk and jazz and blues and whatever it takes to get the music out. There’s a whiff of the unhinged about her, yet she always seems to be in total control; the tunes just sort of slide out of her, sometimes a storm, sometimes a gentle breeze, breaking every heart in the place with ‘So Sorry’ and then healing them in an instant with ‘My Moon, My Man’.
In another century, she might have been burned as a witch for what she’s doing, and it might be cruel if it weren’t so stunningly good. She asks the room what the ‘funny letters’ on the Irish road signs are, “Is it Gaelic or Celtic?” “It’s Irish!” the room yells in unison, forgiving in the way Dublin crowds rarely are. After all, it’s her first time in Ireland, and from the mesmeric response it’s clear we’re all thinking the same thing: can we keep her?