Olivia Rodrigo
Marlay Park, Dublin
★★★★★
Whatever else Olivia Rodrigo fans expect of the singer as they make their way to her Marlay Park concert, in deepest south Dublin, on Tuesday, it’s surely not for her to weigh in on the scourge of Civil War politics in Ireland. Yet that’s what they get, after a fashion, as halfway through an evening of brilliantly energetic punk-pop she embarks on a cover of I Love You, by the Dublin indie band Fontaines DC.
“The gall of Fine Gael and the fail of Fianna Fáil,” the 22-year-old former star of Disney’s High School Musical shrieks as the song hurtles along. She is cheered on by hordes of 12-year-olds who have emulated the singer’s love of purple by dressing in varying shades of violet and mauve while waving official Olivia Rodrigo glow sticks (€20 from the merch stall).
Rodrigo introduces the track by explaining that she’s a fan of the Irish alternative scene. “You guys have really incredible music here,” she says. “They are so many incredible bands out of Dublin. Lately I’ve been really obsessed with this band Fontaines DC. I’ve been playing this song alone in my room.”
Out of her room and in front of an audience of 35,000 or so, Rodrigo is revealed to be not just another Disney-approved star but a Gen Zer with a headbanging spirit deep in her marrow. She arrives to the strain of We Got the Beat, by The Go-Go’s, an all-woman LA punk band, then plunges into Obsessed, a zippy indie-pop workout that showcases Rodrigo’s passion for loud guitars and for singing with her lips curled and teeth bared, as if she can’t make up her mind whether to write a power ballad about a useless ex or kick them in the shins (or elsewhere).
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The only negative about the performance is that it’s taking place in Marlay Park, an awkward location underserved by public transport at the best of times and which, unless you’re a local, takes hours to get home from, with roads for kilometres around gridlocked after final curtain.
Many attendees will spend more time travelling back from the gig than they spend at the show itself. There’s also a decent chance that they’ll have school the next day. It’s a once-a-year endurance test, if that.
Rodrigo played Dublin 14 months ago. But, to her credit, she has mixed up the set and returns with new backing visuals. (The night begins with an image of her walking a tightrope as her band kicks up a ruckus.) She is also leaning ever further into the idea that she is a sweaty rocker trapped in the frame of a young pop star.
During the rollicking outro to the Pixies-esque Bad Idea Right?, for instance, she and her guitarist echo David Bowie and Mick Ronson’s famous guitar-licking routine from their Ziggy Stardust days. From this mauve megastar of 21st-century rock, it’s a purple reign to cherish.
Without the guitars, Rodrigo makes for an excellent pop icon – as she demonstrates on a terrifically poignant Deja Vu. Encoring with the gently moshing onslaught of Good 4 U and Get Him Back, she climbs a scaffold on the ramp leading into the audience and yells into a loudhailer.
There is one further surprise. Rodrigo is so smote with her Irish fans that she accedes to requests from the pit and delivers a second encore in the form of a wispy ballad, Lacy. It’s an emotional end to a fantastic show. If only the trip home weren’t such an epic undertaking.
