Fresh off of the hype of supporting Oasis in what was arguably the biggest moment/event in live music this century, Richard Ashcroft of The Verve has ridden this wave to its highest heights, with his last Irish headline show being at the Olympia Theatre, with a capacity of around a thousand, to now selling out the 3Arena in minutes, playing to 14,000+ people.
A concert I bought as a Christmas present for my mother, after bringing her to Oasis last year, and it was safe to say we were in for a great night after what we saw in Croke Park.
A setlist fusing his high charting hits with The Verve, and his solo work, he put on an amazing show, with incredibly high energy throughout, both in the slow songs and the energetic ones.
Ashcroft turned three minute songs into ten minute long epic performances of solos of all kinds, chanting choruses repeatedly and giving the crowd exactly what they want, I mean, if you wanted to improve the song “Bittersweet Symphony”, one of the only ways you can do it is just by making it longer.
Ashcroft has shown why he can still sell out arenas based on his name alone, no longer with The Verve, but with a set that incorporates all those hits from his time in the band, and a set that kind of relies on those songs for the crowd pleasers.
Stage Setup: 9/10, Stage setup was nicely done, with the highlight being the incredible job done by the lighting team, the timing of the lights along with the music, perfectly blending in with each song, and for the first time I’ve ever seen, a support act who also had a full light show programmed.
Band Performance: 9/10, Ashcroft is an incredible frontman, who knows exactly what is required to be up on that stage as the centre of attention, I often tell people that when he supported Oasis it seemed like nobody told him he was a support act, he put that much into it. The guitarist as-well was out of this world good, with some ethereal solos that made me wonder if what he was doing was even possible with a guitar.
Support: 10/10, The Royston Club on support, a band that seems to blend the nonchalant British indie rock of the Arctic Monkeys, with the belting vocals of a singer like Picture This’ Ryan Hennessy, along with mixing acoustic and heavily distorted sections wonderfully. There was also a DJ in between sets, but he was abysmal, and not technically listed as support so I’d rather pretend he wasn’t there.
Merchandise: 7/10, A very standard merch selection, posters, t-shirts, longsleeves, hoodies and the likes, also a jersey, which seems to be a trend among artist merchandise lately, all at a very standard price, personally, I bought a t shirt off of a seller outside, who hade exact recreations of the tour t shirts for half the price.
Crowd: 8/10, A crowd that loved and savoured every minute of the show, sang along and belted out every verse and chorus without fail, and who really seemed like they connected with the music, the crowd does lose a few points due to the amount of incidents I witnessed of hostility towards people and staff, mostly due to alcohol consumption.
Overall: 9/10, A show that cements Ashcroft’s place within the current Britpop revival that has swept these fair isles over the last few years, and an artist worth seeing just for his handful of hits alone, with all the other songs as amazing bonuses on top of it.
Next up: Sofia Isella 1/6/26
Jays Concert Blog 