Review: John Grant, Cork Opera House

John Grant was at his brilliant best at Cork Opera House, writes Ellie O'Byrne

[rating]4[/rating]

What is it about John Grant that engenders such a sense of ownership and affection amongst fans? At Cork’s Opera House, love was very much in the air for the larger than life singer-songwriter.

Perhaps the answer lies in his ability to craft songs of universal theme from the utterly personal: through honestly confronting his own demons, he’s mastered the art of graciously handing emotional ownership of his songs to the listener.

Glacier is the song Grant says he wishes he could have heard when he was a teenager, struggling to come out as gay in a conservative family in the US in the 1980s.

But when he sings “this pain is a glacier moving through you/carving out deep valleys and spectacular landscapes,” it becomes an anthem for human strength in the face of adversity in whatever form you want to take it.

Because it’s coming from one so open about his own struggles, including his 2011 HIV diagnosis and years of substance abuse, it’s utterly authentic.

If anyone can advise you not to be paralysed with fear without seeming flippant, it’s the 50-year-old former Czars singer.

Between songs, there are the dark barbs of wit he’s so known for.

“I know how much you like lullabies in this country, so this is a song I learned from my grandmother when I was just a little boy,” he says, introducing Jesus Hates Faggots.

The gleefully vindictive title track from his break-out 2010 album, Queen of Denmark, he tells us, was performed for the first time in Myrtleville’s Pine Lodge; somebody should immediately erect a plaque.

GMF goes down as it always does, with the audience gleefully singing along.

But while Grant’s much-loved familiar work hits home with an enraptured crowd, he’s touring the recently released Love Is Magic, an album that positions the singer further from sweeping piano ballads and closer to the dance music he’s always dabbled in.

The newer material is synth-soaked, retro electro-pop. Drumming from former Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees drummer Budgie, some choreographed dance moves, and a tongue-in-cheek keytar solo on He Is Strange are some of many nods to the ‘80s.

The album’s single, He’s Got His Mother’s Hips, is disco with an acerbic sting: is he paying homage to gay clubbing culture, or parodying it, or a little of both?

It’s catchy, but more superficial and less memorably anthemic than the songs he’s best known for.

There are so many danceable moments that the Opera House might be advised to remove the seats to host future Grant gigs, but then again, the gig oscillates between absolute bangers and piano anthems, leaving the audience caught between break-out patches of dancing and rapt, seated attention.

During the encore, the audience shout competing requests. “How much time have you got?” Grant asks, smiling.

“All night,” someone hollers back. But there’s only time for one more, and it’s Caramel, a pure, sweet love-song utterly lacking in cynicism, Grant at his brave, expansive finest.