Katell Keineg, 19th September 2024, Whelan’s, Dublin

These days it’s rare to encounter a gig moment when the audience is so caught on rapt attention, the dull thud of beer-taps in the intimate venue bar makes for subtle percussion. But the air was already dense with anticipation before Katell Keineg wandered on stage to cheers from an assortment of fans assembled for her first gig in well over a decade. Nor was this any old venue, rather the iconic Dublin setting of her once ubiquitous billing in the ’90s. When the game was not yet up on the trajectory of her rising star, or on the dreams and visions of those who willed her mercurial voice out of niche adulation into wider commercial success. An encounter with those Whelan’s shows vacuum-packed in the annals of spellbinding experiences in the memory of the lucky. But fairy tales being as they are, stuffed with changing fortunes of record companies, rogue horizons disguised as kindly mentors, and looming curfews, we can only delight now in stealing a chance to return to the ball for that feared one last waltz.

Katell Keineg (centre) with Ann Scott and Adrian Crowley

Accompanied in parts by Ann Scott and Adrian Crowley, themselves no slouches when it comes to solo songwriting success, Keineg herded us though a sparse set-list of greatest non-hits across her 30 year oeuvre. Some of which tanked for good reason. The anti-consumerist protest song Shaking The Disease boasts all the musical and lyrical nourishment of an aural Big Mac, as does the dreary, two-fingered salute to the eponymous Arsehole Song of which there are, unsurprisingly, a great many commensurate with life experienced on its release. Both drift from her solid poetic sensibility and knack for beguiling melody. No matter, these were found in plentiful supply. So too her self-effacing crowd banter and loosely recurring motifs of French Surrealists as name-checked in the obituary inspired Leonor (Fini), and those ever easy tongue flips from French, to Spanish in the shimmering tale of conquest in Olé, Conquistador.

Staying with her second album, Jet, the infectiously optimistic Once Hell of a Life loosened the audience enough from their admiration to enthusiastically join in. A song title Katell was surprised to learn was shared by a recent Tom Jones offering, until she discovered her compatriot was singing a cover. A belated minor change of fortune. Having returned to Wales following the peripatetic life of the artist (encountering loads of arseholes), Katell’s creativity endures in the local scene. Recent projects include contributions to a stage musical. An unreleased album is alluded to from which she plays Medals, a tender paean to an Aunt on her Father’s Breton side replete with plaintive refrain, but confirmation of its release is not forthcoming.

Meanwhile, four albums and two EPs criss-cross vast emotional terrain. Paris is generously shared among her stage peers before she swoops in like an eagle to snatch the final verse elevating it to its original majestic height. Franklin climbs dizzying liberation and vocal range to its steam train finale. There You Go stuns the room into silence as she embarks on the first of a few rounds of goodbyes. The most nostalgia averse among us would be forgiven for being seduced by generous helpings of intoxicating remembering whens, but what makes Keineg’s songs timeless is the intellectual fires they maintain regardless of time and place. These days it’s a relief to encounter a gig moment that hauntingly joins the dots between now and then with stark lyrical grace and subtly. The Gulf of Araby with its explorations of divides great and small forever teetering under fate’s mercy, seems destined to chime with prevailing news headlines of whatever the day. Curfew looming, an unrehearsed rendition of a compensatory Smile (“everything is alright”) before we’re tossed back out onto the present with neon lights scratching at its underbelly.

Stolen poster