Gemma Hayes live at the Roisin Dubh, Galway

“Gosh... you’re all being very quiet,” Gemma Hayes nervously complained more than once during her Roisin Dubh set. In fact, the Tipperary singer said it almost as often as she changed guitars.
Actually, the Galway crowd seemed to be reacting in inverse proportion to Hayes’ set. The louder she got, and the harder she tried, the more muted and subdued her audience became. There was plenty of respectful applause, but nobody was tearing down the walls.
As an admirer of her new album The Hollow Of Morning, I’d been hoping for a more mellow and subdued performance, but she was playing with a full band and, at least half the time, their intention seemed to be to out-Pixie the Pixies. It didn’t really work.
Of course, it didn’t help that the crowd were unfamiliar with much of the new material. Having opened with reliable crowd-pleasers ‘Happy Sad’ and ‘Hanging Around’, her new single ‘Out Of Our Hands’ followed. Unfortunately, it’s probably the weakest song on the album.
Once she’d settled down a little, things improved. She makes a decent fist of ‘In Over My Head’ and ‘What A Day’. ‘This Is What You Do’ was quite gorgeous. I just wished she’d have done it that way more often.
As things progressed, though, she looked like she was trying to rock out with the lads. Indeed, they were obviously having a better time than the audience.
At several points, it came across like a musical masturbation session. Sounded fine, but you could have been listening to anything by the climax. All the subtleties, melodies and magic were drowned in noise.
Afterwards, I went home and listened to the album again. A far more enjoyable listening experience than the gig. But so it goes...