Confidence Man review: Five-star fun from Aussie foursome at Olympia, Dublin
A file picture of Confidence Man at All Together Now earlier this year; they played the Olympia in Dublin on Tuesday.
★★★★★
Confidence Man didn’t stand a chance at Electric Picnic 2023, their early-evening Sunday set clashing with the unstoppable force of the resurgent Wolfe Tones. The following year they played a Friday-night set at All Together Now. Granted it was the third stage but it felt like the buzziest set of the weekend. Perhaps it was their Glastonbury set earlier in summer 2024 that changed things for the Australian four-piece but suddenly the secret seemed to have got out. The ultimate festival band, they make you want to go on the tear.
A four-piece from Brisbane, Australia, Confidence Man are led by the “hot, sexy, beautiful” duo of Janet Planet and Sugar Bones - we’ll call them by their stage names - and backed by Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie on drums/keys/DJ decks. Someone is going out with someone else in the band but nobody seems quite sure who exactly - like the White Stripes, it all adds to the allure.
Theirs is a dance sound as in debt to the Venga Boys as it is to the KLF, while they’ve also collaborated with acts like DJ Seinfeld. They ask on the second song of the night at Dublin’s Olympia, which sold out in a couple of hours, does it make you feel good? There’s no disguising it, Confidence Man make music that leaves you beaming ear to ear.
Life is too short to resist - and as Planet declares on ‘So What’, “Too many days of wastin' your life.” It’s one of only a handful of songs played from their third studio album, a record which really doesn’t do justice to what a good live act they are.
If 2024 was the year of Charli XCX and Brat Summer, Confidence Man sound like the house band, running around the stage, Bones opening bottles of bubbly, and Planet doing backflips to her heart’s content. ‘C.O.O.L. Party’ and ‘Boyfriend (Repeat)’ off their debut album, Confident Music For Confident People, get greeted like old friends, the former talking about being at the party of the year (with the uber-cool ones to watch Fcukers on support - think a Balearic Biig Piig doing baggy - it feels like that at the Olympia).
This Irish show is the final date of Confidence Man’s extensive EU tour, their penultimate gig of 2024, but they show no sign of slowing down. We get two costume changes, Bones and Planet jumping behind the stage to change into, first, glowing shoulder pads and cone bra, respectively, and then even less clothes.
All the while, Goodchild and McGuffie keep the music going, with no break in the jams until the encore. Prior to that, we get ‘Holiday’, a euphoric call to arms, Bones imploring that “we all need something to live for, baby”. For the heaving Olympia, Confidence Man offer all that and more. They’re irresistible.
