Perhaps surprisingly considering how long the band have been around, Moloko fans in Limerick are mostly in their late teens/early twenties. The awe and surrender of young men and women to the spell of leading lady, Róisín Murphy, was in itself a source of captivating entertainment. “She’s f***ing unreal,” marvelled a young man on my right, “I love her,” sighed a young girl behind me.
Arriving on stage backed by a flaming sunrise effect, Murphy proved to be a consummate performer, displaying all the presence and finesse of a young Debbie Harry. Easing in, sexy and slinky, with ‘Familiar Feeling’, she stepped it up with ‘I Want You’ and of course the highly infectious ‘Fun For Me’. To see artists so at ease with themselves, their music and so inclusive of their audience without taking the all too familiar and annoying Simon Says approach is incredibly refreshing. At times it felt like a scene from Coyote Ugly, with Ms Murphy finding a perch high by a pillar on which to strut her stuff. Actually strut doesn’t half cover it.
This girl knows how to work a crowd, several times crouching down and delving in to be close to her fans, even catching the mike – stand and all – and moving it through the audience. ‘Sing It Back’ and ‘The Time Is Now’ were undoubtedly the anthems of the evening, generating a euphoria akin to an Ibiza dance club. However, tracks from Moloko’s latest album Statues including ‘Cannot Contain This’, with Murphy’s dramatic use of symbolic aids, and ‘100%’ received a rapturous reception also. Another Heineken Green Room sessions belter!