Opening for the soul matriach at the Olympia, precocious Dublin teenager Laura Isibor was a solitary figure under a stark spotlight in a sparsely filled venue. Those of us who’d made it in on time agreed it was a shame Isibor wasn’t a little more fashionably late so that the tardy audience could’ve witnessed some first-class soul. It has been said of Isibor that the only thing to betray her age (it certainly isn’t that powerful voice or piano work) is the occasional trite lyric befitting a teenager. Hardly an issue, as this is really the genre in which to indulge those themes particular to adolescents and the perpetually dismayed.
When the smartly dressed young go-getters and their frosty blonde dates eventually made it in, they in turn were treated to a long wait. Interesting to note that modern R'n’B panders to the masses who look like they listen to Shania Twain in their cars and never sing gospel in the shower. No harm, there were plenty of hardcore fans to make up the numbers.
The inimitable Angie Stone arrived in pomp and bluster, along with her seven-member band, with various musical tasks fluidly exchanged between drummer, guitar-players and the classic soul triumvirate of Angie and her two Pips. The Gladys comparison is more than fair; indeed Stone draws on the pantheon of great soul artists like Aretha and Marvin to create her own brand of slick R‘n’B. Soul by numbers was on the menu, with an ecstatic audience drawn into expertly executed sing-alongs and a remarkable clap-along effort that resulted in three or four minutes of flawless audience percussion climaxing one particular song.
Stone has an exhausting attitude to her performance, declaring “I’m gonna make you work” before successfully getting everyone out of their seat for Mahogany Soul classics like ‘Wish I Didn’t Miss You’.
A consistent songwriter, though not always in a good way, Stone rounded off the night with a couple of token rappers and a story about how she had to “fight like hell” to get to keep the song ‘Karma’ on her new album Stone Love. As if anyone would dare to argue back.