Kacey Musgraves kicked off her ‘Deeper Well World Tour’ in Dublin at the 145-year-old Olympia Theatre on Sunday 28th April 2024. Expressing her love for the city, the country, and the people, she explained that the tour had to begin here in this special place, noting the theatre’s unique beauty.
Floating onto the stage in a white mini dress, nude plimsoles and white ribbons adorning her hair like a pixie or fairy, she opened the show with ‘Cardinal’. Also being the opener for the Deeper Well album itself, it is one of the livelier tracks on this album, but it’s lyrics also represent a lot of what this album and tour is: connecting with nature and looking for meaning. In ‘Cardinal’, she wonders if the red songbird is a sign of a lost loved one as traditionally, encounters with the bird are cited to bring strength or hope.
Kacey herself is a brilliant performer, but one aspect that immediately struck me from this first song is how her live band really elevate her shows. They’re playing the keyboard, drums, bass guitar, electric guitar, flute, banjo, providing backing vocals. Being in that room, sounds just like listening to the track, but better because you get to watch all the elements come together. They took us seamlessly through the first five songs, all from Deeper Well, including the title track itself. Then she treated us, with a very audible chorus of approval from the audience, to ‘Butterflies’, the Grammy Award winning single from Golden Hour, and my personal favourite. Despite being the Deeper Well tour, there was a considerable amount played from Golden Hour, likely due to being her most well-known and home to many fan-favourite tracks.
Not one to shy away from the truth, she shared story about the horrific case of food poisoning that she had suffered in Ireland just a few days prior to this show. It is this raw honesty that I think is part of her appeal, she puts everything on the table in her lyrics and every emotion into her shows. This emotion really resonates with the audience, there was not many dry eyes in the audience that evening, including my own. Not one to usually get emotional at shows, somewhere between ‘Butterflies’ and ‘Giver/Taker’, track five of the new album, I couldn’t stop myself.
She went on to play ‘Lonely Weekend’ followed by ‘Lonely Millionaire’, which was a natural pairing, before setting up a stool and gathering with a few of her band members for an acoustic rendition of ‘Follow Your Arrow’. She hadn’t played this song since 2019, but it was clear why she added it back on to the set. Released back in 2013 it becomes more and more poignant with every year that it ages. A song all about societal double standards, she encourages the listener and the audience to just live your life however it makes you happy. It’s not without its criticism and within white country music, this song was part of a major shift, stepping away from the more problematic values that have long been associated with the genre. Staying seated, she performed ‘The Architect’, a stunning acoustic track questioning whether there is a greater power, a divine force looking over us, or are all the beautiful things purely coincidental. Kacey’s unique, alluring melody and lightweight vocals transform this existential idea into a sweet, digestible lullaby, one that is bewitching as a live performance.
For ‘Heaven Is’, which already feels like it may have some Irish or Celtic influences, she invited an Irish Uilleann Pipes player to join her on the stage. It was a moment of stillness, as everyone, on and off stage, were transfixed by his talent and the instrument’s sound. It wasn’t long before that attention changed to Kacey and we were transfixed by her flawless vocals instead.
Following the track ‘Jade Green’, the lighting and sounds were used for dramatic effect, one of the only times they didn’t rely purely on their own skill with instruments. The stage went into darkness, the sound of rain and thunder came blaring in, followed shortly by white strobe lighting (or lightning). Then out of the darkness, Kacey appeared and the ‘rain and wind stopped blowin’’ in time for her to sing ‘Rainbow’, from Golden Hour. Accompanied by rainbow back lighting shining up at her, it was just one more of those magic moments that filled her set.
Amongst any predictions for what the setlist might’ve been, I think everyone was surprised when she asked us ‘Do I remind you of your daddy in his ’88 Ford?’ and sung ‘I Remember Everything’, a Zach Bryan track that she featured on. It’s also a Grammy winner and hasn’t left the charts in a while so perhaps it’s place on the setlist is well deserved. I was not, nor was the rest of the crowd, complaining in any way, singing along in perfect unison.
A lot of Kacey’s style on this new album is more in the acoustic country region, so she drew again from Golden Hour for a disco-esque, country-pop moment with ‘High Horse’, getting everyone moving. It was then onto one of her very first hits, ‘Merry Go ‘Round’, which has seemingly made it onto every one of her headlining tours. Kacey fought for this song to be released despite being advised not to due to the commentary on small Christian town life possibly being a risky debut. Nonetheless, she won herself a Grammy Award for Best Country Song at the 56th Grammys and praise from various artists such as Katy Perry.
To close out her enchanting set, her final full song was a cover of Three Little Birds by Bob Marley. Looking at her show history, this has been one of her most frequent covers and of this year, she now has an official release for the Bob Marley: One Love soundtrack. It’s a mesmerising cover which you can listen to wherever you get your tunes along with the Deeper Well album. Finally, she closed us out with a few lines of ‘easier said’ from the star-crossed album.
