King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
Glasgow
05/05/24
Lyra! yes sista! Welcome to Glasgow!
Lyra is essentially a one-woman Mount Parnassus – all the muses are at play within the electric vortex of her creative soul, which explodes upon the stage in sonic supernovas, like the birth of so many stars. Thalia is there, the Muse of Comedy, cosm well, she’s funny as fuck – I mean laugh-out loud funny, as we ride her Irish bantermind in between the operatic performances of her (mostly) self-penn’d songs. That brings us naturally to Erato & Euterpe, the Muses of Music; follow’d by Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance. Admittedly Lyra pulls off some reyt moves, which she describes as ‘bad dancing’, but I’d have to describe more as physical overenthusiasm. Do they not have choreographers in County Cork?
She is also the living incarnation of Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, especially when she starts rattling on about her ex-boyfriend of whom a good few of her songs are concern’d – think Amy Whitehouse’s epic laments to Blake in Back to Back. But Lyra won’t be going back to her ex, I’m guessing, for the uberpositivity she’s declaring for this year being her year zero, & from now on she’s doing it all her own way, far from the days when record execs were telling her to not to speak inbetween the songs & to lose a bit of weight… no, those days are over, & she is now less than a month into the era after her debut album, the eponymous Lyra, has been releas’d.
Last night we were given fourteen songs; perform’d in a sparkly, pink, disco-era, thighs-cut-away outfit. Of the set, most of the album was there, & a few other gems. Her older classics, New Day & Falling, have been stitch’d into the album, which gives kudos to her ‘appreciation society’ for waiting a good few years for her debut. They are really excellent tunes, them two, a high benchmark to which most of the rest of the album manages to achieve.
With extreme confidence shimmering in every syllable, Lyra was accompanied by a super-tight, yet flourish-laden drummer, & a keyboardist who control’d that vast plethora of soundscapes that ‘jeuje up!’ each song. In the center of all of this reigns Lyra’s distinctive voice – a key deeper than most female vocalists, but with the ability to explode into nuclear majesty. At times I felt like she was hovering like Mothra at the gates of the Universe, screaming to Humanity to sort its fucking act out. Yeah, it’s that powerful!
Her greatest beauty as a performer is the pub-crack banter in-between the songs, which is so endearing, familial even. I lost count of how many times she said she was ‘mortified’ about some event or other in her life. As for reaching out to the audience, her flatterpatter comes from a truly genuine place. It was such natural warmth which first got me interested in her as an artist – I’d seen her supporting Westlife a couple years back, & was really tickl’d by her chat – the aforemention’d ‘funny as fuck.’ I’ve never, ever, seen someone so musically talented who is also funnier than most of the Edinburgh Fringe.
As she proceeded to whip up her sonic storms, I look’d around the audience & could see people tilting their heads back, looking, not at Lyra, but above her, to some celestial presence, their souls & lips singing along to this pantheon catchy tunes. It’s early days for Lyra away from Ireland, where she seems to be a household name – her album’s number one there I noticed -, but I’ve got a feeling by the time the next album’s being tour’d, & she’s not singing moody songs about her ex anymore, but infusing her music with the beautiful energy she shares with us when she’s not singing, then I’m sure something special is gonna happen.
Damo
Mumble Music 