Review: Sigrid rocks Dublin with a brilliant vibe

Sigrid, 3Arena, Dublin

[rating]5[/rating]

Sigrid Solbakk Raabe is somewhat of an anomaly as we survey the pop landscape in 2019.

The 23 year-old Bergen, Norway native is an essentially optimistic songwriter, unburdened by the existential dread that hangs over so many of her generation .

That’s true even when she is angry, as she certainly was on breakthrough single Don’t Kill My Vibe – her chart-topping rebuke to the middle-aged producers who thought it might be a good idea to side-line her in the recording studio.

Don’t Kill My Vibe’s sharp edges were allied to a chorus that shot for the stratosphere.

There was lots of that same vigorous sense of wonder as she performed her first ever headline arena show.

The occasion was clearly special for Sigrid, who burst into tears as she revealed her parents had flown in to cheer her on.

“They used to listen to me playing songs in my bedroom, thinking what is she doing in there?” she said, during a stripped-down segment where she sat at a keyboard. “And now here we are.”

Sigrid’s image is that she doesn’t have an image. She sported an aggressively dressed-down look: comfy jeans, bouncy running shoes and longish hair (shortened slightly since she last played Dublin last year).

The same aesthetic choices can be seen in the stark staging, with a video screen projecting warm colours against her four -piece band.

But there was nothing understated about the hard-knuckled pop of Plot Twist and Raw.

Her empathic and urgent voice was showcased again on Don’t Kill My Vibe, which arrived halfway through.

She had at that point already introduced wide-screen weepy Sight Of You by explaining how she wrote it after being overwhelmed by the welcome she received at Electric Picnic 2018.

Strangers, her other big smash, was saved for the end. Fabulous, frantic and ferocious it was everything a great pop song should be – and proof Sigrid’s Nordic conquest has only just begun.