Ed Sheeran review: Fireworks and happy fans for fantastic first night in Cork
Ed Sheeran on stage at Pairc Ui Chaoimh in Cork on Thursday night. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
Where do you go for a measuring stick when the best gets better? Ed Sheeran’s show at Páirc Ui Chaoimh on Thursday night left his barnstorming 2018 tour in the ha’penny place.
“Some of you may know my story,” Sheeran told his Cork fans. “When I started out, I couldn’t get a record company to sign me, so I wrote songs for other people instead. The first ‘cut’ that I was a song for Olly Murs [‘Love Shine Down’].
“I’ve stayed with the habit of writing for other people. My record company doesn’t always understand why I do it, but that’s just the way it is for me. Sometimes these songs don’t do anything and then sometimes they’re hits for other people.”
The Suffolk singer said some of these songs had all the charm of “a wet fart” when he played them on his famous loop station in a few shows. It was to do justice to playing these songs that Sheeran now has a band fall in for a few mini-sets during his ‘Mathematics’ tour, featuring songs from all of Ed’s album titles [+ - = x ÷] to date.
Perhaps the most successful of these outsourced songs so far has been ‘Love Yourself’, a global hit for Justin Bieber. Ed also treated Cork to ‘Visiting Hours’, ‘Own It’, ‘Peru’, ‘Beautiful People’ and ‘I Don’t Care’.
By the time Ed was in his own hits section the entire of Páirc Ui Chaoimh was already in his pocket, clapping and singing along on command, in his corner swinging with his every punch. These hits really deliver live – ‘Sing’, ‘Photograph’, ‘Perfect’, ‘Shape of You’, the sublime ‘Thinking Out Loud’.
I really enjoyed witnessing three slightly tipsy young lads nearby singing near-perfect harmonies to ‘Bloodstream’ – the acid test, of course, would be to do it sober; I guess we’ll never know. By the time the show is closing with ‘You Need Me, I Don’t Need You’, the crowd is emotionally drained, sung out and totally sated.
“Cork, you’re more mental on a Thursday night than Dublin on a Saturday night,” said Sheeran. “I can’t thank you enough for coming out on a Thursday night. It feels so great to be doing big shows like this again. Let’s make it a four-day weekend.”
A big shout out to Limerick rapper Denise Chaila, whose opening set absolutely rocked; her homecoming visit to Thomond Park next week will be monster. She was followed by Maisie Peters, the singer-songwriter that Sheeran is such a fan of he signed her to his own record label.
But back to the main act. Troubadour of choice for a soulful generation, Ed Sheeran takes the humble acoustic guitar to dizzying digital heights unimaginable to the any analogue folk artist of even the most recent past.
Playing on a round stage, rotating on a circular outer belt (“Sometimes it feels like I’m spinning like sushi,” joked Carvery Ed), surrounded by giant glittering circular screens, meandering amid the floating plectrum-shaped chandelier sub-screens that deliver 360-degree visual overload to his adoring fans, this slightly scruffy ginger genius somehow outshines all the dazzling tech.
How? Why? God knows, but he definitely rises above it all. He’s doing it for himself and he’s doing it for his generation. His genius has echoes of the 1980s/’90s, when Neil Young thanked Tracey Chapman for keeping the acoustic flame alive in a sea of electronic music.
Ed Sheeran often says his music stands upon the shoulders of folk artists from Joni Mitchell through to Declan Rice and all the soulful Gods in between. In reality, everyone from Van to Christy to Beyoncé heaps praise upon young Ed, still only 31, thanking him for his services to songwriting.
Yes, to the craft of songwriting. Not for reviving the ailing heart of folk music with a sharp shock from his loop pedal defibrillator.
Having hit the ground running with ‘The A Team’, a poetic window into teen drug use, Ed has continued to craft beautiful songs that freeze-frame a moment, speaking of the spirit of an era, shining an insightful light without casting judgement. That is why the musical gods and goddesses are all so generous in their praise.
The fact that he keeps pushing musical boundaries just speaks of the same poetic unrest, like a digitised Tom Waits tyre-kicking his way through the littered junkyards of his era’s collective consciousness, asking poetic questions, never waiting around for prosaic answers.
Himself arguably the symbol of his generation, his album titles [+ - = x ÷] look like they could be inspired by the symbols of a video game console. These songs connect with the video game generation(s), and yet they feel more sombre and deep than playful.
And yet, in a live show, he’s all about the energy and fun. Ed is of soulful folk. He’s energised, but not cheesy cheerful; uplifting, optimistic even, seemingly happy, but as prone to a grimace as a smile.
Perhaps, after all, he’s just like the rest of us. Exhausted by all that it takes to deliver and to enjoy such an emotionally charged night. You’d have to love him.
