Reilly's stage presence is quite special in that he looks genuinely surprised and grateful that anyone has turned up, let alone when people know the words and sing along. His banter with the crowd just added to that feeling that you're watching someone you've known for years, sharing stories of putting on a stone in recording the last album, how his family have been buying up all the copies of his first album and turning down an offer from the crowd to stay at someone's house rather than going home the next day. He is also one of the few people who manage to keep quite a strong accent even while singing, with the Glaswegian twang easy to spot throughout the night (and hard not to try and imitate when you're singing along).
Alone on stage for a stripped-down acoustic set, it's easy to see how Reilly won the Orange competition. The emotion, enthusiasm and slightly odd mannerisms that every song was delivered with even managed to silence those people who insist on talking throughout a gig (seriously people, why do you do that?). Opening with 'Could do better', this was the final leg of the tour to support the new album, 'Hello, I'm Tommy Reilly', and the set featured a mix of tracks from both albums.
Switching to keyboard for 'Make the bed' (the only song of the night not performed on guitar) this song was recorded as a duet and for some of the tour at least, performed that way. It's a credit to Reilly that even without the added support of the female vocals, this song was still one of the most powerful of the night, really delivering the intended emotion to the crowd who by now were watching in appreciative silence.
'Gimme a call', one of Reilly's more popular tracks, is so much better live that it's almost impossible to put into words. The energy from Reilly as the song reaches crescendo is something that's just not possible to capture in a recording let alone a review, even the versions on YouTube don't come close.
Somewhat surprisingly the famous cover of 'Mr Brightside' was absent from the set-list, but this at least meant that all the talk afterwards focussed on his songs rather than someone else's. He did however manage to get in a beautiful rendition of a Bob Dylan song, the name of which embarrassingly escapes me.
'Jacket' is the last song before the encore and one of the more upbeat tracks of the night. Rather sheepishly appearing back after the customary cheers, Reilly then shared an excellent story of how, some years ago, he tried that and returned to an empty stage. The final song of the night, 'I Don't Like Coffee' is not an album track, but one of the final ones performed in the Orange competition and one of his best.
Worth a mention was the support, Thomas J Speight (and band), who were actually very good fun and worth checking out, but suffered from the unfortunate problem of the main act just being a whole class above.
article by: Darren Willsher
published: 27/09/2010 15:36
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