The Sky's the limit ... | livemusic.fm

Following the success of their second studio album Skybound , Baxter & his band once again returned to the Olympia in Dublin, a city and country that has become the band's second home. Baxter has a lot more presence in the Irish music scene compared to London, and subsequently receives more attention from the music press and more airplay on Irish radio ... the Emerald Isle has ever been a fertile stomping ground for singer songwriters such as David Gray, Damien Rice & Declan O'Rourke (to name a few!) and Tom Baxter it seems is no exception. Consequently, Baxter is a lot more well-known to the general gig going public, and as such there was a sizeable, slightly sozzled, audience packing into the faded fin-de-siècle opulence that is the Olympia Theatre.

It is true to say that an Irish audience is always up for a bit of craic, especially if they've been drinking a few pints of the black stuff to keep out the damp and the chills - and they definitely weren't to be disappointed this night! The size of the venue was perfect and seemed a long way from the slightly bizarre Amadeus gig I had seen 18 months before in Maida Vale, London. Because Baxter, and particularly Better is all over Irish Radio, and the album Skybound is in the Top 10 of the Irish charts, this has meant that his music has reached a fair number of people in Ireland ... and so instead of playing to just over a hundred or so people in London, Baxter and his band now sell out fairly large capacity Irish Victorian music halls.

To be honest I've always been a tiny bit disappointed with the UK gigs, mainly because Tom seems to pretty much avoid playing too much from the Sony era (i.e. the album and singles before Skybound) ... but I had heard that his Irish gigs (particularly the one at Whelans in 2005) were phenomenal so I decided to have a trip to Dublin and check it out ... After a support slot from solo pianist-vocalist Max Greenwood, to warm up the audience, Baxter and his band took the stage, opening - similarly to the last two gigs I'd seen in the UK - with the jazzy-funky toe-tapping number On A Night Like This. Tom Fry's stand-up bass thumped out the catchy bass-line and got the crowd swaying in sympathy to the cool groove of the song. On A Night ... led effortlessly into a rousing anthemic version of the title track of the latest album, the eponymous Skybound, which was a lot more impressive live with it's rousing crescendo - you could really feel that Baxter had quickly caught the full attention of the audience. Now he had their attention Baxter didn't let it go, and the catchy latino rhythms of Tell Her Today were unleashed onto the crowd - the "Buena Vista-esque" Cuban-jam finale, featuring a particularly impressive outburst from keyboard player Danny Keane.

An older song,Half a Man, more reminiscent of the oft compared Jeff Buckley, followed using an impressive reverb overdriven telecaster, rather than the more customary acoustic guitar. I've always liked this song and to be honest, as good as the new songs are, I've always enjoyed the rawer emotional edge of this song and some of the more bitter -than-sweet lyrics of the Sony era tracks. A Day in Verona was also from this period, and the true character of the "Dub "crowd came to the fore as Baxter tried to explain the origins of the song, but was quickly a victim of a good-natured heckle to "Get on and play it then Tom, ya bollix" ... or something like that! The stage then cleared and left the Suffolk Songwriter alone with the audience. Hot Wax to a Stone wove it's bittersweet charm on the crowd. Apparently this song has become a favourite of the live audiences despite missing both albums and it's easy to see why. In my mind it draws heavily, both in melody and sentiment, from Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Got To My Lovely? - a song Baxter has previously covered - and the comparison bears scrutiny against the depth of Baxter's talents as songwriter. Icarus Wings is another song with a heavy Latino influence, gained from some of Tom's odysseys traveling through Latin America, which added to the party atmosphere ... by the time the band had finished this and launched into the current single Better, the crowd was well in the mood for some sing-a-longa participation, which, due to heavy radio airplay of the single, they were able to do admirably! And it's fair to say that pretty much everyone in Ireland can sing, so it was a pretty accomplished and pleasing harmony adding a new dimension to what Baxter and his sister, backing vocalist Vashti, had already started off on stage.

By the time the balladeer essence of Tom Baxter had launched into the showpiece Almost There, the crowd was completely rapt. It's not one of my personal favourites I confess, but I know I'm in the minority as everyone else, including my girlfriend, loves the song ... and even to me it more than justify's the plaudits surrounding both Baxter's vocal dexterity and his skill in writing vocal harmonies. For me though it's a bit of a choice of Tom the voice against Tom the singer-songwriter; and to me Almost There is too much of a vocal showboat...

However the finale of Don't Let Go suffers from none of this extroversion and is just a straight forward, well-written, well-crafted piece of instrumental and vocal emotion. It starts with a very Irish-jig sounding melody and weaves layer upon layer of sound, from the keyboards,to the acoustic guitar, to the stand up bass, to the cavernous sounding drums of Ché Albright and the beautiful refrains of Oli Langford's fiddle. It's easy to see why this is such a popular end song and to be frank it is always one of the highlights of a Tom Baxter gig - tonight was no exception.

After some loud pleading from the, by now, fairly ecstatic crowd, Baxter returned to the stage. The crowd were treated to a fine rendition of Love is not Enough, followed by the stand-out track of his first single My Declaration. This clearly also got a lot of airplay in Ireland on its release, and the crowd once again, in full Celtic voice, augmented the passion and sentiment of the original song. I've always felt it was a great piece of song-writing and hearing it sung with at least a hundred other voices joining Baxter's, was quite a cathartic experience. Once again the pleading of the crowd (including waves of applause and hoots of pleasure) prised Baxter from backstage. After some thanks he closed his set, on his own, with a contrastingly intimate song. I actually don't know the name of the song but I remember his brother, Charlie Winston, had once before played something similar at the Tom Baxter gig in the Soho Arts Theatre. It's a song about half-broken dreams and the pace of life, and combines humour and sadness in equal measure, finishing with a crowd sing-a-long of "row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream ..."

Frankly the last was a masterpiece and really encapsulated the full song-writing talents of Baxter in one number - from his double-edged lyrics, to his warmth and humour, to his obvious abilities as a virtuoso performer to enthrall a crowd with just his voice and a guitar. The success of Skybound has proved he doesn't need the resources of a major label to reach an audience - like the Troubadours of the middle-ages, the prowess, passion and power of his live performances are reaching the ears of many via the refreshingly old-school method of word-of-mouth ... if Baxter continues to build on this success then he will indeed maintain his momentum and continue his journey sky wards.