Live Report: Isobel Campbell at the Liberty Hall Theatre, Dublin

Isobel Campbell and her band shuffled from the wings without fanfare. The low-key entrance was the perfect framing device for the understated folk pop to follow. Tonight less was irrefutably more.

Campbell is touring her wonderful new album, There Is No Other. The record finally sees daylight having become bogged down in record company logistical issues. It has proved worth the wait, as did Campbell’s live re-staging of such sleepy-eyed elegies as ‘The National Bird of India’ and ‘City of Angels’

The latter was a valentine to her adopted home of Los Angeles, where the former Belle and Sebastian member now lives with her husband. Perhaps unsurprisingly it celebrates the LA of hazy sunshine and plaintive songwriters (Laurel Canyon casts a shadow over the entire LP) rather than the leather jackets and excessive denim Sunset Strip or the bling and bitterness of Hollywood.

The hushed indie swell of these and other songs was given added grit by her muscular backing band and by Campbell’s melancholic cello. The banter was dry too. Introducing her Scottish guitarist she couldn’t help note that her team had gone down to Ireland in the rugby.

“We lose at everything,’ she sighed. The lesson this by turns mournful and heartfelt performance conveyed was that sometimes the world looks more interesting from the perspective of the eternal underdog.

Isobel Campbell at Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.2.2020 Copyright Colm Kelly.