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Duke Special, Glen Hansard
Island Arts Centre, Lisburn

It is safe to say that the crowd do not know what to expect when the man that calls himself “Duke Special” ambles into view. Hiding behind a veil of mascara and dreadlocks, he tentatively approaches a vintage gramophone to the left of the stage. He winds up the device, slides a disc out of its sleeve, carefully places it onto the turntable, and drops the needle. Log fire crackles and disembodied voices emanate from the auditorium speakers, and Duke Special begins to play his piano.

What follows is a rather fantastic set of bittersweet tunes. Located somewhere between music hall, ragtime and the theme from Cheers, Duke Special’s songs are incredibly tactile: the music is pretty, but the lyrics are spiky with longing and regret. “Some things make your soul feel clean,” he sings in a powerful voice that is at odds with his meek appearance. Duke Special’s performance is theatrical but not false, and he even manages to breathe new life into the much-covered ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by transforming it into a slow, desperately sad ballad. The moment when he sings “something so good just can’t function no more” is so intimate that it stings your heart.


After a quick equipment reshuffle, Glen Hansard strides onstage to what can only be described as a hero’s welcome. Anyone who has ever seen either him play live, with or without his fellow Frames, will know just how euphoric these performances can be. Glen always gives value for money, and tonight is no exception. Opening with a particularly stirring version of ‘Say it to Me Now’, he romps through twenty or so songs from an extensive back catalogue. I am sure that it is tremendously uncool to rhapsodise this wildly, but I can honestly say that tonight marks one of the best gigs that I have ever attended. It doesn’t matter that Glen forgets the chords to ‘Locusts’, or that he inserts the pun “he left you in Coleraine again” into ‘Fake’. I’ve heard the joke before, but it’s a good one, and it’s still funny.

You see, cynics have pointed to the fact that Glen’s most ardent fans – and that includes me, folks – will applaud him just for tuning his guitar. But that misses the point of just how joyful and celebratory his performances can be when he is firing on all cylinders. Tonight, he injects nuclear amounts of energy into ‘Seven Day Mile’ and ‘Revelate’, and, on a cover of ‘Hungry For Your Love’, even manages to make me appreciate the work of Van Morrison. Believe me, that is quite some feat. There are too many little explosions to list in full here, an indoor fireworks display sends catherine wheels reeling to the core of me and, given the hushed reverence in the auditorium, the rest of the audience as well. Glen spills out jokes between and often during songs, but this does not obscure just how competent a performer he has become. He plays a work-in-progress that contains the lines “You won’t disappoint me / I can do that to myself”, and my heart stings again.

It is an evening full of these twinges. Glen, accompanied by his Czech friend Marketa, performs the Daniel Johnston number ‘Some Things Last a Long Time’, and I pretend to scribble notes to steel myself from welling up. When the gig stretches beyond the curfew, and Glen and Marketa, sans microphones, sit on the edge of the stage and lilt through an impromptu version of ‘Hallelujah’, the crowd is so quiet that you could hear my jaw drop. It is the perfect coda to an evening that is rich with magic and wonder. Some things, it seems, make your soul feel clean.