Live At Vicar Street

As if the point that reports of his retirement had been greatly exaggerated needed driving home, the Great Sweating One has released a live CD of tracks recorded over four nights at Vicar Street last winter.

The break, brief as it was, seems to have done him a power of good. His voice on this recording is lighter, stronger, and more flexible (yeah, I know, I’m sounding like an advert for some new kind of aluminium sheeting) than it’s been in years. Both speaking and singing, he sounds a good decade younger than he did on 1990s studio albums like King Puck and Graffiti Tongue.

Gone, too, are the preachiness and curmudgeonliness that characterised Moore’s output just before he announced his abandonment of the spotlight. Instead of berating the crowd, he’s urging them to sing along (which they do, with enthusiasm) on classic favourites like Jimmy MacCarthy’s ‘Ride On’ and Shane MacGowan’s ‘A Pair Of Brown Eyes’. He genuinely seems to be enjoying himself, even when singing material he’d have every right to be sick of by now – ‘Lisdoonvarna’, ‘McIlhatton’, ‘January Man’.

Longtime Moore pals Donal Lunny and Declan Sinnott provide backup on guitars, keyboards, bodhrán and harmony vocals. Like the old session pros they are, the pair keep things safe and unobtrusive for most of the album; it’s only on Cork songwriter John Spillane’s vibey ‘Johnny Don’t Go’ that they finally seem to let rip, and it’s one of the stronger numbers here.

The standout track, though, is a mesmerising rendition of Ewan MacColl’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, made famous by Roberta Flack back in the late ‘60s and arguably the greatest love song ever written. Lunny’s rumbling synth and Sinnott’s spookily flanged guitar blend perfectly behind Moore’s husky, crooning vocals, to spine-tingling effect. Interestingly, this song was recorded at the Savoy in Cork on the 24th of February last, nearly three months after the rest of the CD.

The album finishes with a tribute to the late and little-heralded songwriter Noel Brazil, who died shortly before the Vicar Street concerts took place. It’s a poignant moment… nearly as poignant as the spectacle of a once-jaded performer rediscovering his love of the music.