The curtains open and Release starts, with a stark black-and-white visual on the screens behind. Delicate vocals from Ed on the verses, and he changes the line to “Oh, dear Glen…” He also ad-libs during Low Light, adding “…not alone”…
Main Set: Release, Low Light, Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Corduroy, Given To Fly, Scared Of Fear, Eruption, React, Respond, Wreckage, Wishlist, Even Flow, Dark Matter, Daughter/(Give Me The Cure/Suggestion), Jeremy, Upper Hand, Better Man/(Save It For Later), Black/(We Belong Together), Porch
encore 1: Keep Me In Your Heart, Not For You/(Modern Girl), Why Go, Do The Evolution, Setting Sun, Alive, Rockin' In The Free World
The curtains open and Release starts, with a stark black-and-white visual on the screens behind. Delicate vocals from Ed on the verses, and he changes the line to “Oh, dear Glen…” He also ad-libs during Low Light, adding “…not alone” quickly after the “…can I be here all alone?” line. After Small Town, he says “…it’s been a while! We missed you!” [the last show in Ireland was in 2010], adding that they’re “humbled” that everyone came. Ed loses it early on Given to Fly, saying he’s out of breath, but continues. Plenty of singalongs in the set tonight. Eruption is added to the set after Scared of Fear, Jeff runs off stage and Ed takes a breather. Before Wreckage, Ed says “…when recording this last record, we shot for the clouds…and we might have gotten lucky.” He points out a kid up front, Alex, who’s celebrating his 11th birthday, and says the theme of the night is “young men growing up to be good men, so Alex, when you grow up, don’t be a fucking…[Ed pauses, realizing he’s cursed in front of a kid]…knucklehead.” Matt shines on all the new songs, and Dark Matter especially. Afterwards, Ed mentions that he wrote a poem on a cloth on the trip over, and reads it to the crowd:
“Oh to land in Dublin, with Eddie Burns on the aisle,
I don’t have to drink tonight, knowing tomorrow I’ll be doing the drinking for a while,
There’s a full moon flying over Ireland, and briefly all seems right in this world,
These are the moments you’d like for to last, like a first date with your forever girl,
And the winds ain’t even blowing, and the rains are somehow far away,
The face of this city is glowing, in awareness of the rareness of the day,
Wherever I am, if I am with you, I’ve always got a room with a view.”
2 Fugazi songs are tagged onto Daughter, “Give Me The Cure” (“Give me the shot/Give me the cure/Give me the shot/Now what you’ve done to our world”) and then “Suggestion”, which had only been tagged once since 1998, in 2018. Ed bangs on a tambourine during the end of Upper Hand then sends it flying into the crowd. Prior to Better Man, he talks about the Natasha O’Brien protests and women’s rights, concluding with “…it might be a good idea to have a few more female judges as well, when you think about it…” The crowd takes the intro, and Ed says “sounds great” before joining back in. Black is dedicated to Amelia Ferguson, who had tragically passed at the young age of 14, and her family and friends, Ed gets emotional talking about her struggle with health issues and their grief. The song stretches out past 8 minutes, Mike’s solo is stellar, eliciting so much out of his instrument, and Ed has both hands on the microphone during the short but powerful We Belong Together tag. Coming back out solo after the break, he says “…this was a great wave tonight, and we’re very grateful…” He dedicates Keep Me In Your Heart to Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan, and talks about how Shane stole the beers out of their dressing room at the Slane Castle show in 1993. Stone has a very staccato solo in the middle of Not For You. Ed shouts “Stone!” before the Evolution solo, and then changes the lyric to “…admire my Stone…” He gets emotional during the Modern Girl tag and barely gets through it. Setting Sun is not the closer tonight, we’ll see if they change that up for the rest of Europe. Ed goes down front (there’s a large distance between the stage and the front row) and gives high fives during the Alive solo. Ed tries to get a call and response going during RITFW, but the crowd just sings along with him. Before the band kicks back in, he exclaims “Thank you for bringing it! Thank you for giving it!” and before the solo, adds “…fuckin’ beautiful!” He takes the mic one last time before leaving, saying “…sorry, getting emotional up here…can’t tell you what it means, thanks so much…be safe now, love each other. Thank you.”