Live Report: Lucy Dacus captivates the Iveagh Gardens with poignant gentleness

Thursday evening - the sky has just cleared up on Dublin, and the Iveagh Gardens are imbued in the day’s last ray of light. As the clock hits 9pm, the first violin melodies of Lucy Dacus’ ‘Calliope Prelude’ – the opener to both her show and her most recent album Forever Is A Feeling — resonate through the ground, solemn, powerful, and more than a little attention grabbing.

“Being back here makes me hot in the face,” Dacus sings, kicking off the night with ‘Hot & Heavy’, standing centre stage in her signature suit and guitar strapped around her shoulders.

Lucy Dacus at Iveagh Gardens on July 3rd, 2025. Copyright Jessica Flynn/ Hotpress.com

With the following track ‘Ankles’, the show’s tone is set: melancholy-filled numbers lined with an inexplicable sense of joy and hope. In the golden beams of the Dublin sunset, the melodies effortlessly hit a raw nerve, both incredibly emotional and endlessly exalting.

Track after track, ranging from rock-flavoured pop numbers to melancholic, stripped-back ballads, Dacus’ voice appears incredibly controlled and measured to a T, clear as crystal water and indistinguishable from the tracks’ studio versions. Impressively, this technical prowess allows for the musician’s songwriting to shine through with ease, each of her hard-hitting lyrics delightfully reaching through the heart, never drowned out by her incredible backing band.

Lucy Dacus at Iveagh Gardens on July 3rd, 2025. Copyright Jessica Flynn/ Hotpress.com

The power of her voice is also more than enough to carry through her quieter tracks – as she kicks off the piano-driven track ‘Modigliani’, the crowd falls silent and completely attentive, as if suddenly standing in the centre of Dacus’ church.

If the stage’s setup is relatively simple, Dacus’ presence and the obvious chemistry she shares with her band are more than enough to grip the venue’s attention completely. All soft smiles and gentle looks as she walks up the front of the stage, her charisma is off the charts, inciting crowd-wide giggles every time she addresses the audience.

Lucy Dacus at Iveagh Gardens on July 3rd, 2025. Copyright Jessica Flynn/ Hotpress.com

In a rare stroke of luck, it quickly appears that this evening’s audience is just as charming as the woman of the hour, visibly enjoying each other’s company and the fact that Dacus called Dublin “one of my favorite cities in the world.” On ‘VBS’, as she sings ‘Hands above our heads, reaching for God,” the crowd follows the lyrics’ instructions like clockwork, inciting a delightfully surprised “woo!” from the musician.

Proving her love for Dublin, Dacus kicks off the acoustic section of her show with an unexpected and glistening cover of Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Roy’s Tune’. If she had already expressed her affection for the Irish heavyweights in the past, this choice of song appears as unanticipated as it is appropriate, sounding almost like an original track in the American singer’s silky-smooth vocals and gently emotional tones.

In another Dublin special, Dacus invites Derry singer-songwriter SOAK on stage to accompany her on the Hozier co-fronted track ‘Bullseye’, a delicate and deliciously moving duet made even more special by the occasion.

Kicking off her encore by treating her audience to the boygenius-signed ‘True Blue’, there’s a feeling that Dacus would happily spend the rest of the night on stage if the clock wasn’t ticking, all smiles, headbobs and pretty melodies. In another crowd pleaser, she jumps into a perfectly moving and incredibly delightful rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’, a first in her tour setlist.

Now racing against the 10:30pm curfew and bathed in red lights, Dacus closes the night with the devastatingly powerful ‘Night Shift’ – a sure way to wrap-up an already emotional evening on an emotional note, as the audience shouts-along the song’s outro in a moment as heart-wrenching as it is joyfully communal.