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“Come on, just try not to move and it won’t hurt at all. It’s when you struggle that it becomes painful” said Dr. Keane as he passed a microscope a foot long through my nose and down into my throat.
“Ah, nothing to worry about, you have a strawberries and cream larynx”
Dr. Keane explained that this means that my vocal folds, the part of my voice that I sing with, are in perfect working order. Unfortunately for me and for our fans in Lincoln and Wolverhampton, the rest of my throat is swollen to the extent that every note above G above middle comes out with all the strength, beauty and charm of an inflatable sex-doll with a puncture. So it’s antibiotics and a couple of days watching movies and listening to Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Neil Young, before I’m back on the road and back on the plane to Dublin.

You can get a strange feeling returning to hotel rooms. In this game, it’s usually after an absence of about 18 months. Hotels can often, very kindly, put you in the exact same room every time; in Dublin it’s always the ‘rocknroll suite’ at the Morrison. You check in and sit down and try to imagine all the places you’ve been since you were last there, try to picture the distance the earth has spun through space, you try to imagine all the people who have been through that very same room in the last year or so and try to figure out what’s changed and what hasn’t in your life and if you’ve learnt anything at all.

I got the same feeling on stage at the Olympia. It’s one of my favourite venues in Dublin and the world, a tight 19th century music hall with vertiginous views from the upper gallery, great natural acoustics and as close a balcony as you’ll ever find in a rocknroll venue. In the cramped corridors, the grey light of an Irish November creeps in through windows that will never be opened, washing over faded posters advertising intimate shows from some of the great songwriters of the last twenty years; Mike Scott, Ricky Lee Jones, REM, Shane MacGowan, Morrissey, Arcade Fire; I always get the feeling that for the artist and the fans they were career highlights, more intimate and more vital than the usual experience of paying thirty quid and being packed into a sports hall, cow shed or U-boat factory. I took a bit of time out around soundcheck just to wander the halls and soak it all in, recapturing that feeling of being a punter who’s shelled out for tickets and is just praying that the band will be on form.

So up there on stage, I’m still being followed by that nostalgic feeling from the hotel. Last time we were here was a month before our second album was released, just over two years ago. Just like in the hotel, I’m thinking about all the places we’ve played since we were last there, wondering what’s changed and what hasn’t and which other bands have been through the venue and if we’ve learnt anything at all.

There’s not a lot I can share regarding my thoughts about the band in these pages, without wanting my meaning to be twisted and mauled or laid out flat and vacuum packed with its humour and its character ransacked…

But here on the stage, within the storm, from where I’m looking, from where it’s happening; I see the boys in the band around me, all four of us illogical inarticulate indefatigable oddballs, playing our hearts out, sweating and blistered, trying to make the unreal real.

Some nights it works, some nights everybody in the room, the band, the fans, the roadies, the punters and the blaggers become bulletproof. A bunch of strangers becoming more than the sum of their parts, joined together by the singular improbability of two thousand people all singing the same words at the same time in the same room.

And Dr. Keane’s words come back to me; “its when you struggle that it becomes painful” and the song says “all they know is how to put you down…” and tonight everybody is singing it. Just like we’ll be singing it every night. And for a moment no one here is struggling, and it doesn’t hurt a bit.