Tom Grennan hit the high notes at Cork's Marquee  

While no stranger to playing Live at the Marquee, Tom Grennan’s headline show there last Thursday night was his first concert is Cork as a father, and the maturity that comes from becoming a parent has translated into this performance.

On his current tour he has tended to find a song to do with the locality to come on stage to, and he astutely picked After All by Cork’s own The Frank & Walters. 

He and his band took the energy created by a hometown hit and immediately went into Full Attention, one of the standout singles from his most recent album Everywhere I Went, Led Me to Where I Didn’t Want to Be.

The title of the song proved apt as he was constantly marshalling and interacting with the crowd throughout his set, speaking throughout of his delight to be back in Ireland.

Other songs from his most recent album that hit the high notes with the audience included Higher, which was his second song on the night, and Somewhere Only We Go, both songs demonstrating this vocal range, where he interconnected his harmonies brilliantly with his backing singers.

Speaking of sharing vocals, in the middle of his set, Tom spoke to the crowd of his love of Irish music, how the Irish influenced him “through and through”, and brought onto stage Jamie McIntyre, who had also been one of the support acts – along with Fiona Lee.

Tom spoke to the audience about how he thought Jamie had something ‘very special’ and predicted James will end up playing venues 10 times the size of the Marquee.

Kicked into gear

They played a duet together and afterwards Tom exclaimed: “How do I go on! That was so good!”

Grennan, of course, managed to find another gear to help him keep going.

The evening hit its stride when the opening bars of All Goes Wrong kicked in, originally released in collaboration with Chase & Status nearly 10 years ago.

Admirably, Grennan’s band have found a new way of performing the song that keeps the original rhythms of the song but adds more musical layers to make it really suit the large live music audience.

One common thread throughout the show was Grennan, other than him celebrating his connection to Ireland, bigging up the new music that he has been working on, crediting Irish acts with influencing him, as well as a desire to go back to his roots as a songwriter.

One can only assume those songs will perfectly soundtrack future nights Live at the Marquee, as well as him continuing to keep performing so many of his hits that so easily entertained the audience.