Gig review: Simple Kid makes triumphant return for first gig in 15 years
Simple Kid - aka Kieran Mac Feely - played Whelan's in Dublin.
As Simple Kid - the alias of Kieran Mac Feely - walked out onto the stage in Whelan’s on Friday night for his first gig in 15 years a projector screen behind him kicked into life. Via rolling text in a green retro computer game font we’re informed that his two albums from the early 00s were followed by a hiatus - kids, a real job and a mortgage. A cheer went up from the soldout crowd as the screen declared Simple Kid’s return with his third album, last year’s SK3: Health & Safety. With his harmonica, fuzzed-up acoustic guitar and backing tracks he had us in the palm of his hand.
Three songs in the crowd sang every word of ‘Staring at the Sun’ one of the standout tracks from SK1, his 2003 debut album, and whatever cobwebs had been present were well and truly blown away. Mac Feely smiled as the crowd roared their approval, he seemed humbled by the reaction and very happy to be back on a stage.
Mac Feely first came to prominence in the late 1990s when The Young Offenders, the Cork glam-infused band he fronted released a couple of memorable singles, but their big break never materialised.
Thanks @simplekidstuff for a great night of music last night in Whelan’s. ‘Truck On’ was one of my highlights ✌️ pic.twitter.com/gi1NipoJu8
— John Barker (@JohnBarkerTilt) April 8, 2023
The Douglas man then bought a microphone, a laptop and an 8-track tape machine and resurfaced as Simple Kid. Two acclaimed albums followed. He was compared to Badly Drawn Boy and Beck and memorably the NME called him “the post-modern Bob Dylan”. After supporting Kings of Leon on a US tour in 2007 he disappeared.
A few years ago, and based in the UK, he started quietly releasing new music on his YouTube channel, songs he told the Whelan’s crowd that he wrote late at night in his loft as his kids slept below.
Midway through the gig he swapped his guitar for a keyboard and played one of those late night compositions, the plaintively beautiful ‘Nobel Prize’, and a song that suggests a more contemplative middle-age. Dedicating it to his, and all of our dads, he sang: “My father changed the world, But no one gave him prizes, The scientific world, Never realised just what he’d done, He kept me warm.” The crowd stood silently, a collective moment that everyone seemed to relate to, before erupting in applause.
To a projected backdrop of 1970s and ‘80s pop-culture clips old singles ‘Truck On’, ‘The Average Man’ and ‘Serotonin’ are rapturously received, but deeper cuts - ‘Supertramps & Superstars’ and ‘The Commuter’ - also inspire mass singalongs. This was a triumphant return, the headful of Bolan-esque corkscrew curls may have long receded but there’s no doubting that the Kid is back.
