O2 Academy, Leeds 19th December 2025
After years of work, Cian Ducrot’s star is in the ascendant and he deserves it. He’s got the knack of the big chorus, the catchy pop song, a good voice, catchy Irish lilt, great versatility on a range of instruments, a polished band and a sense of showmanship. He knows to throw variety in and to work the audience with some chat and interaction. But someone needs to tell him when to shut up and show off that talent.
Leeds saw seventeen songs stretched over two hours and ten minutes – a high quality eighty minute set packed out with vast amounts of blether; anything up to quarter of an hour at a time of natter, like five minutes pretending to tell the band off. A minute would have been funny but some of the audience were leaving half an hour before the end, which is a shame, given the talent on show.
With only a couple of albums under his belt, there are an unusually strong bunch of songs to play and they are varied. We get pop bangers, ballads, folk, Irish traditional, country and the variety keeps it fresh. Sometimes songs get big jamming endings and grandstanding, like ‘Shalalala’, and these see band members climbing onto the grand piano to throw some poses. Other times, Cian pulls out a flute or tin whistle to lead a folky piece, ‘Kiss And Tell’. In ‘No Way To Live’ he goes Pete Seeger, with acoustic guitar and mouth organ before immediately following it with the heavy bass and guitar solos of ‘Hallelulah’. Then onto the country-tinged ‘Rock Bottom’, with its explicit lyrics flying over the heads of the numerous children sat up in the balcony. Like I said – contrast.
He’s adept at starting quiet and building the band in. Or dropping down quiet for a talkie bit before crescendoing again. Only twenty minutes in, he’s sweetly bringing Beth from Leeds on stage to share her heartbreak and leads us in a chant about her ex – “Fuck you, Reegan, you piece of shit” before improvising lyrics for her from ‘Book Of Love’. Later we have the awarding of gifts to audience members, a request to put our phones away and a request to get our phones out again for a complicated mass sign-up to his mailing list. It’s a relief when he gets back to playing a song; ‘All For You’, a song of warm gratitude. But before long, he’s nattering again, losing the momentum he wins in these crowd-pleasing songs. The disco-ish ‘Your Eyes’ is received with rapture as a reprieve from the blarney.
The surprise cover, ‘Fairytale Of New York’ is superbly played by the very talented band and the biggest of the hits, ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ is trailed with a jazzy intro then the audience goes wild when the song breaks out and it seems they know all the words. These are the sort of songs I can hear for the first time and be singing the chorus the second time it comes around.
The crowd love Ducrot and, tonight, he seems to think it is all about his persona. It’s really about the songs; his presentation and personality just an adjunct to them. The way the crowd around me reacts tells me they’re here for the hits. The hits are good; hit us with them hard and fast, Cian. Flash your eyes at us, make a cheeky quip, tell us why you wrote the song. But, for God’s sake, show some restraint on the prattle – it’s boring. If you’d shoved all the songs and a wee bit of chat into an hour and half, we’d have left wanting more.
Ross McGibbon