That feeling that sweeps over you the first time you hear a long-loved song being performed live, what is it? All I know is that repeated hits of it over the past seven days have taught me that the longer the gratification has been delayed, the more potent it is. If it could be bottled, the drug trade would collapse.
It was somewhere during the opening chords of one of the great gems of the Britpop era, a 30-year-old single called What Do I Do Now?, that my happiness at last Saturday’s Sleeper gig at Opium in Dublin ascended to peak elation.
“Make-up like glue, she danced round the room / To the sound of her corduroy flares” were lyrics I adored so much in 1996 that I printed them out from an Amstrad and affixed them to the front of my pencil case. I was too young to have experienced the relationship disintegration that Louise Wener documents in that song, but I could still relate – my corduroy flares that year were a sort of indigo.
As soon as the buoyant Sleeper strode on stage with Wener clutching a beer and effortlessly proving how funny she is, it was clear we were in for an excellent time.
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Early on, she also confirmed something I had suspected. This was the English band’s first Dublin gig. I recall seeing them on television during RTÉ’s coverage of Féile 95 in Cork and wishing I was there, but despite releasing a platinum-selling album, The It Girl, in 1996, they never made it to my city before they split in 1998.
Sleeper re-formed to record a fine comeback record, The Modern Age, from 2019, but, of course, there was a distinct time-travel vibe at Opium. I wasn’t the only one there whose ears were receiving a code that unlocked a bank of teenage audio thrills. Inbetweener! Sale of the Century! Statuesque!
Few were as deft as Wener at the lyrical vignettes that were prevalent in guitar music at the midpoint of the decade, and few bands could match Sleeper’s run of singles for sheer catchiness.
But is it nostalgia if, in fact, you have never really stopped listening to a song? Is it nostalgia if you’re not reliving anything but finally making it to something that eluded you before? It felt more like catharsis tinged with disbelief and something more ineffable than “midlife joy”.
You wait ages to see your one of your teenage music heroines play live, then two of them rock up in Dublin within days.
On Wednesday I dragged my ageing bones to the Miki Berenyi Trio at the Grand Social for more of the special stuff. Berenyi is the former lead singer of Lush, who were originally part of the early-1990s shoegazing wave before being pulled in by Britpop, and they did play Dublin, but you have to be “really f**king old” to have been there, as Berenyi told the crowd. I wasn’t, so I guess that means I’m not.
Like Sleeper, they appeared on the Saturday bill at Féile 95 – sadly, there’s no expiry date on Fomo – and, like Wener’s band and too many other 1990s outfits to mention, Lush broke up and were inactive throughout the 2000s, only to re-form during the 2010s.
That reunion was brief, but Berenyi went on to start Piroshka, then Miki Berenyi Trio, whose 2025 album, Tripla, was one of my biggest repeat listens last year. I’d have been content just to hear its layered guitars and timeless vocals played from start to finish. Still, when Lush tracks were generously woven into the set, the melodies of the likes of For Love and Light from a Dead Star struck me on a cellular level.
The take-no-prisoners humour of their 1996 single Ladykillers, meanwhile, was a reminder that Berenyi, like Wener, was no stranger to the dull, crass sexism that infiltrated the hubristic 1990s music scene in Britain.
I won’t rehash how that manifested, but it threads its way through Wener’s drolly illuminating memoir, Just for One Day (originally titled Different for Girls), and Berenyi’s utterly compelling one, Fingers Crossed, which also powerfully recounts the experiences of abuse and abandonment that were occasionally the subject of her Lush lyrics.
This sense that the women of the 1990s survived immense industry bulls**t makes seeing them with their bands now extra sweet. “This song! They’re doing this song!” is an inner monologue that harmonises nicely with the confidence of women who love what they do, are doing it on their own terms and know how to let that show.
I left Sleeper more certain than ever that this was a band that helped define Britpop as much as it defined them. I left the Miki Berenyi Trio with a Tripla tote bag, a feeling of having closed a loop and the unmistakable sense that great things come to those who wait.
