Luke Combs
Slane Castle, Co Meath
★★★☆☆
Slane Castle is almost indistinguishable from Nashville on Saturday night as the US country-music star Luke Combs takes to the stage for the first of two performances at the Co Meath venue, which will see him perform to more than 160,000 fans.
The hordes who have made the pilgrimage are all dressed the part, kitted out in their finest cowboy boots, Stetson hats and American flags. For a fleeting moment the Royal County is transformed into an oasis of country music.
“I could have never imagined nights like tonight,” he says after opening his two-hour set with the tour’s namesake song, My Kinda Saturday Night, before bursting into Tell ’Em About Tonight, a song from his latest album, The Way I Am, that’s about one day fading from the limelight.
As the first artist to play back-to-back nights at Slane Castle, Combs may have a few years before this imagined scenario becomes a reality.
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Combs’s stage presence evokes a classic image of a country singer – an artist and their guitar conjuring intimacy through the honesty of their lyrical storytelling.
The spareness of the stage production is counteracted by fireworks that set the sky ablaze throughout the evening, much to fans’ delight. But, despite those pyrotechnics, the 36-year-old North Carolinian struggles to keep the crowd onside for the full 120-minute show. In a venue as sizeable as Slane, holding the attention of the audience is no easy feat.
He plays back-to-back ballads in the middle of the set, and this prolonged slow set sees pockets of the crowd become restless, talking among themselves despite Combs’s impressive vocal displays.
One fan confirms feigning interest at various points, saying that she prefers songs from earlier in Combs’s 14-year catalogue to his newer, more stripped-back and mellow work.
A much-needed injection of energy comes from a medley of songs performed by Combs’s band members, especially a brief rendition of She Will Be Loved, by Maroon 5.
The show hits its peak towards the end of the evening, as Combs finally begins to embrace his honky-tonk roots. The song 1, 2 Many sees people up on shoulders, shotgunning cans of beer as the Irish influencer Garron Noone appears onstage to down a Guinness with Combs.
After this spectacle the crowd erupt into a brief round of “olé, olé”, the staple seal of approval that they’re being entertained.
During his three-song encore Combs pays homage to Tracy Chapman as he performs Fast Car, the Chapman cover from 2023 that played a significant role in his crossover breakthrough. Fans have their eyes closed, arms open and phones at a minimum. Then Dermot Kennedy arrives on stage to duet the set’s closing number, Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma.
As the final round of fireworks erupts against the now-night sky, and patrons file out for buses home, cowboy boots in hand, one can’t but think that Combs should have played some of his more upbeat songs earlier in the evening, to alleviate the slow-set lull.
Despite this, it’s clear that his star power will continue to burn bright as he continues to consolidate himself as one of the new juggernauts of country music.
