Kodaline at The Turf Club, St. Paul (10/23/13) concert review

“I wanna travel the world, but I just can’t do it alone”, Kodaline vocalist Steve Garrigan sings in their song, ‘Brand New Day’. Because of the Dublin folk-based quartet’s recent success with breakout single, ‘All I Want’, and release of their debut full-length, In a Perfect World (RCA); the band (whose singer and guitarist have known each other since age 7), gets to do exactly that together—and their travels brought them to St. Paul’s Turf Club on a chilly fall Wednesday evening.



NYC-based songstress Diane Birch is the opener on this autumnal tour, but unfortunately for our market, was offered a chance to appear on the Tonight Show, so was forced to cancel her St. Paul appearance as a result. Local five-piece guitar-based indies The Joseph Bell dutifully filled in with a 30 min. set.

Steve Garrigan

Kodaline (lead singer Steve Garrigan, guitarist Mark Prendergast, bassist Jay Boland and drummer Vinny May Jr.) opened their 65 min. set with ‘After the Fall’, a thumping tempo’d song with somber lyrics about the end of a relationship, then followed with the lush ‘Pray’, Garrigan’s falsetto, similar to early Chris Martin, crooning over his own keyboard-based melody.



“How are you still holding on”, Garrigan pleads in ‘One Day’ and ‘Way Back When’, a song about “growing up…not wanting to grow up” harkened back to their Irish childhood, Prendergast strumming playfully over May’s beating bass drum foundation.

Photo of Setlist

The evening’s strongest highlight came late in the set, when the four left the stage and walked to a mid-room platform, to serenade an older woman with an acoustic, soulful doo-wop cover of Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home’ with full audience snapping (or ‘clicking’ as the Irish say) along.



Returning to the stage, cymbals shimmered and guitars strummed for their biggest song to date, ‘All I Want’. “Take my body”, Garrigan sang in the chorus, and the numerous females in the audience swooning with his every word, seemed eager to take him up on the offer. St. Paul has a rich Irish heritage as a city, and on this night, these four Dublin lads were shown a warm welcome, with a hope that they return again, sooner than later.

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