Live Report: Sylvan Esso shine at The Tivoli Theatre

We make sure to get down there early to catch the support act, electronic loop artist Bayonne. Surprisingly, despite Ireland facing Denmark in a World Cup qualifier play off, we’re not the only ones who have sacrificed the viewing and the place is already packed. Hailing from Austin Texas, Roger Sellers (as he is formally known) provides a friendly introduction, and informs us he’s never been to Ireland before. It might have been this that got the crowd reared up and ready to show him what we’re made of, because we did just that.
Bayonne has honed his trade as a loop artist. His first song starts off with looped keys that he plays over each other creating a gorgeous clustered effect - slightly distorted - until finally a beat from his synths kick in. He then starts layering some gorgeous high pitched vocals until he finally moves on to play, and again loop, some live drums. In this song, and in others throughout his set, the drums are very epic - 80’s power balladesque – think Phil Collins or Don Henley.
His vocals are impressive – at times recalling Animal Collective and Tame Impala. He moves around the stage as he sings – he’s a real performer – and at times kneels in front of his synth stand as though praying at an altar. And, perhaps, he considers it so. He certainly pays it high respect judging from what we have witnessed and it gives a wonderful output. The packed room soaks up everything he threw at them and shows him some serious appreciation. He finished off telling us ‘it was incredible and we were incredible’ and takes a photo – it was definitely a performance to remember.
We stand around and relish what we just got to see, and wait eagerly for the main act – warmed up to say the least. The stage is being set up and it’s a noticeably more minimal presentation than the support – not that this will impact on performance. Maybe they can sense the anticipation in the room, because their entrance certainly plays on it. Blinding and pulsing white lights shine through a plume of smoke as Nick Sanborn takes his place behind his table and plays the opening beats of ‘Sound’ – a minimal track to whet our appetite. Amelia Meath’s sweet but distorted vocals can be heard and she eventually appears from the fog – all of this to rapturous applause.
They finally jump straight into something with a lot more bite and all the pent up energy from the crowd gets released in spectacular fashion. By the third song, ‘Kick Jump Twist’, everyone is dancing, but perhaps no one as much as Amelia herself. We are in awe as she does a spectacular high kick reaching pretty much to her shoulder, and in boots whose heels are far from small – no mean feat! She gets pretty low as she’s singing a lyric about ‘shifting’ – has she picked up on the local lingo already!? All this energy feeds back wonderfully to the room and there’s a lot of enthusiastic singing back and audience participation.
Perhaps needing a little break, we are offered the more low key ‘Coffee’ which is slightly less dancey, but once revived we’re straight back into the high energy ‘Just Dancing’ and it’s all set off again! Somewhere around this point, a coordination problem resulted in your writer pouring half a glass of refreshment all over herself – thankfully the twosome on stage have created an energy and a flame that can’t be dampened.
At this point, we’re informed that after an extensive tour, our performers were “dead” – they had the flu and Amelia had hurt her knee (knowing this makes that earlier high kick even more impressive). They said despite all this, the crowd ‘gave them life’ and thanked us – though we were more than happy to offer our services!
We are now given something a bit more stripped back – sparse synths backed up with a consistent wood block beat eventually working in an atmospheric but steady back drop note which all fades off to reveal the bare vocal – striking.
The sets closing trio are all personal favourites, and crowd pleasers – ‘Hey Mami’, ‘H.S.K.T’ and ‘Radio’ – what would be a perfect conclusion to a jam packed set. Though, it’s not strictly over. Although there is a looming curfew, the pair come back for one more contribution. They thank the crew and Bayonne and send us off into the night to the sound of ‘Play it Right’ – a fitting choice as they did exactly that. We can only hope we gave them as memorable a night as they gave us – one to remember to close out their tour.