Malahide Castle Preview: A brilliantly eclectic line-up featuring Paolo Nutini, Hozier, Blur, Depeche Mode, Florence + The Machine and more

Depeche Mode have long declared that they “just can’t get enough” – and that certainty seems to be the case for the synth-pop heroes’ Irish fanbase, who again welcome Dave Gahan, Martin Gore et al to Dublin on June 14. The Essex legends play the first in this summer’s series of Malahide Castle concerts, which boast another mouthwatering line-up.

Having rocked the venue with classic anthems like ‘Enjoy The Silence’ and ‘Personal Jesus’, Depeche hand the baton on to soul-pop supremo Paolo Nutini on Bloomsday, June 16. Last summer found Nutini enjoying his third consecutive number one album in Ireland and the UK, Last Night In The Bittersweet, which notably contained a songwriting credit for one Quentin Tarantino, thanks to Nutini’s sampling of dialogue from True Romance.

A busy 2022 also found the singer supporting Liam Gallagher at his massive Knebworth extravaganza, as well as gigging at Dublin’s Olympia – a nice aperitif for the Malahide show. You could scarcely ask for a more perfect band to soundtrack a summer Saturday night than Blur, with the Britpop crew bringing their substantial treasure chest of hits to Malahide on June 24.

Back gigging for the first time 2015, when they released their Irish and UK number one album The Magic Whip, Damon Albarn and the boys are sure to prompt mass singalongs to classics like ‘Girls & Boys’, ‘Parklife’, ‘Song 2’ and ‘Tender’. Albarn, of course, is already familiar with Malahide, having played a superb show at the venue with his other wildly popular group, Gorillaz, back in 2018.

The following night, June 25, it’s the turn of indie-pop star Sam Fender, riding high on the success of two consecutive UK number one albums, 2019’s Hypersonic Missiles and 2021’s Seventeen Going Under. Recorded in Westmeath’s Grouse Lodge, the latter yielded a bona fide mega-hit in the title track, whilst the Geordie Fender – whose formative guitar influences were Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Slash – has also earned considerable acclaim for his gritty tales of modern youth culture and working class life.

Those in the mood for some celebratory baroque-pop, meanwhile, are in for a treat on June 27, which sees Malahide taken over by the brilliant Florence and the Machine. Having scored another global hit with her most recent album, last year’s Dance Fever, Florence has finessed her live performances during a world tour that will ultimately last 18 months, with audiences thrilling to hits like ‘Dog Days Are Over’ and ‘Cosmic Love’.

On June 28, it’s the turn of English pop legend Gordon Sumner, aka Sting, whose well-stocked collection of hits will get an airing in Malahide. Inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame alongside the rest of The Police fully 20 years ago, Sting has been in typically eclectic form in recent times. Having won a Grammy in 2019 for his collaborative album with rapper Shaggy, 44/876, the singer returned to his rock roots with 2021’s The Bridge, which Sting described as being written “in a year of global pandemic, personal loss, separation, disruption, lockdown and extraordinary social and political turmoil”.

As well as solo hits like ‘Englishman In New York’ and ‘Fields Of Gold’, fans can look forward to a helping of Police favourites when the Newcastle star hits Dublin.

Rounding out the extraordinary run of gigs on June 30 is Hozier, whose ascension into the major leagues received further confirmation in 2019, when his second album Wasteland, Baby! topped the US charts. Having returned on St. Patrick’s Day this year with the EP Eat Your Young, Hozier will no doubt deliver a fantastic set of soulful anthems to an adoring home audience – ahead of the release of his new album, Unreal Unearth, on August 18.

Spotlight on Paolo Nutini:

“Listen to the deep soul of something like ‘No Other Way’, which answers the question of what Otis Redding might have sounded like if he came from the next town over from Glasgow…”

Words: Pat Carty

Back in 2006, Paolo Nutini appeared to be the result of some sort of secret, perfect popstar experiment. What had really happened was a lot of slogging as a roadie and studio hand, before moving to London from his native Paisley and working the singer-songwriter circuit. His first demo, recorded not long after he turned eighteen, earned him a contract with Atlantic Records. Read that last line again. People have killed for less.

There was a free download of the lovely ‘These Streets’, but it was his first proper single, ‘Last Request’, a top five UK hit that July, which really made it seem that he came out of nowhere. Whatever about the video clip, which showcased to the world a man who was genetically blessed with the sort of good looks that had the rest of us cursing our parents, it was the voice that really knocked you over.

Singing in a burr that was pure honey-flavoured highland toffee, it ached with real soul, eased the pain like a wee dram, and set him apart from the glut of singer-songwriters then roaming wild. The song, its follow up ‘Jenny Don’t Be Hasty’ – which was if anything even more catchy – and the next release ‘Rewind’, all displayed some very accomplished songwriting chops. You’d spit at him in the street for being a poxy bastard if he wasn’t so bloody good.

Debut album These Streets landed at number three and troubled cash registers the world over, selling at least a million-and-a-half copies in the UK alone. What could go wrong? Nothing. 2009’s Sunny Side Up scoffed in the face of any ‘second album blues’ nonsense. Preceded by lead single ‘Candy’, on which he sounded even more unapologetically Caledonian, the album was and is a blend of “soul, country, folk and the brash horny energy of ragtime swing”, according to former Hot Press man Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph.

In my opinion, it showed real growth from the first record, separating Nutini completely from his contemporaries. ‘Pencil Full Of Lead’, the appropriately named ’10/10’, and the especially great ‘Coming Up Easy’, with its irresistible horn-driven, sing-along coda – “It was in love I was created and in love is how I hope I die”, and there are surely worse ways to go – were all impossible to dislike.

He sounded like John Martyn in an uncharacteristically good mood and had a suitably great band around him, one that seemed unconcerned with showboating, when they could busy themselves serving their boss’s great songs, songs that won him an Ivor Novello award in 2010. It outsold the first album, which is only right and proper because it was the better record.

Go past the hits on Sunny Side Up and listen to the deep soul of something like ‘No Other Way’, which answers the question of what Otis Redding might have sounded like if he came from the next town over from Glasgow, and you can see where Nutini would go next. 2014’s Caustic Love turned up the soul and R&B influences, nowhere more so than on first single, the impossibly funky ‘Scream (Funk My Love Up)’.

When Nutini screams hallelujah, you feel it, even if the name of the lord is to you but a swear word. ‘Fashion’ was also hard to stay still for, and featured a guest spot from R&B queen Janelle Monáe, while ‘Let Me Down’ sampled the great Bettye LaVette record of the same name. It was two songs at the centre of the record, however, that showed – if there was any remaining doubt – that Nutini was someone to take seriously.

‘Better Man’ sits on gentle drums and feint organ, but it’s the voice, telling you how “that girl” makes him want to be a better man that could, if he wished, convince you to hand over your pin number. When the backing vocals burst through and lift the whole thing up several notches, it’s like someone switching on the sun. Could you class ‘Iron Sky’ as some sort of prog-soul? It’s better than that description sounds, as Nutini pushes his voice right out, bemoaning society’s ills.

The blast of the brass is a masterstroke. You’re thinking it wouldn’t shame Marvin Gaye at his peak, and then he samples Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator to hammer his point home. Little wonder The Independent reckoned it might be “the best UK R&B album since the 1970’s blue-eyed-soul heyday of Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker.”

Nutini hit the road again and then decided he needed some time off. What did he do during the eight years we had to wait for his next record? It sounds like he just took a bit of me time. He played Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations as 2016 turned into 2017 – organisers had to put on a second show on December 30th due to ridiculous ticket demand – but apart from that, his only public performance during the period was the odd bit of karaoke in Paisley, the town he had moved back to. If he had decided to kick back and enjoy himself for a while – and perhaps listen to his collection of Doctor Millar records – then he’d earned the right to do so.

Finally, in May 2022, ‘Through The Echoes’ – where the voice outdoes itself and gives the fingers to most other “singers” – and ‘Lose It’ were released on the same day, tasters for the fourth album which boded very well indeed. Drop the needle anywhere on Last Night In The Bittersweet – a perhaps more varied record than the ones that went before it – and you’ll land on something great, whether it be the Nick Loweish ‘Petrified In Love’; which has a smart key change; the True Romance sampling ‘Afterneath’; the simplicity of ‘Writer’; or The Strokes do gospel of ‘Lose It’. What you really want is the widescreen soul throb of ‘Shine A Light’ or the hit that should have been, ‘Radio’. Did the album go to number one? Take a wild guess.

Having been lucky to enough to see Nutini live a few times, both out in fields and under theatre lights, I can tell you that he doesn’t disappoint live either. While one might hope he’d hit the odd bum note if only to prove he’s of the same species as the rest of us, it doesn’t happen. When he lands for his three beyond sold out Irish summer shows – in Musgrave Park Cork, Malahide Castle, and at Belfast’s Belsonic – his set, going on reports from his recent Australian tour, will concentrate on the Bittersweet material with the odd selection from earlier in his career.

The thing is it doesn’t really matter what he decides to play on the night, because it’s all pretty great, and even if it happens to be a song you don’t like, you can just gaze at that sickeningly dreamy face while you’re waiting for the next one.

“It’s quite a lucky way to go through life,” he told Hot Press scribe Jess Murray last year, discussing his glorious career. “Even when I’ve not been making music publicly or commercially, if I manage to write something or capture some little thing in a creative sense, then I’ll quite happily sail though that day.” Good man, Paolo. Keep them coming. See you in June.

Paolo Nutini plays Musgrave Park, Cork on June 14; Malahide Castle, Dublin (16); and Belsonic, Belfast (17).

Read the full June Gig Special – presented in association with MCD – in the current issue of Hot Press: