Sugababes
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★☆
Like a cross between Destiny’s Child and the cast of Grange Hill, Sugababes’ streak of early-21st-century hits applied a gritty British teenage twist to classic girl-group pop. The only missing ingredient was the ability to get along. From the start, their quicksilver sound was clouded by melodrama and the occasional backstage bust-up.
But a quarter of a century later the band’s founding members, Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy, have tied a ribbon around their tumultuous history and replaced conflict with collective joy.
Rolling into 3Arena for the latest leg of a greatest-hits tour, they delightfully blend nostalgia with the message that, even in the cut-throat music industry, time heals all.
There was a lot of healing to do. Donaghy left Sugababes in acrimony after just one album, in the middle of a run of dates in Japan. Three years later, in March 2004, a concert in Dublin was cancelled 10 minutes after it was due to start amid rumours of a dressingroom face-off between Buchanan and Donaghy’s replacement, Heidi Range.
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If ever a comeback was destined to be bumpy, then it was surely that of Sugababes, who are back in Ireland, at the scene of the most notorious flashpoint. (It was later reported that the cause of the Buchanan-Range dust-up was the perpetually controversial subject of Britney Spears’s song Toxic.)
The twist is that instead of tears and tension, the original Sugababes have returned wiser and more appreciative of their audience.
To that end their Easter Sunday concert is a treat as delicious as an artisanal chocolate egg. It helps that, unlike that of some of their contemporaries – think Spice Girls – their music has held up. That point is demonstrated as they kick off with the doomy, slo-mo stomp of Overload, their debut single, from September 2000, performed on stools that are revealed as a giant curtain falls to the ground.
The atmosphere is half early-2000s pop revival and half heavenly school disco. Backed by a no-frills video display and a pub rock-y band, they rip through Red Dress and Ugly, a one-two that doubles as post-girl power feminist anthem. (“Unzip your bias,” the video screen declares during the former.)
Sadly, the middle of the set lags by comparison: Sugababes don’t have quite enough hits to deliver end-to-end bangers. A medley of their early recordings is, for instance, received with polite applause rather than any great enthusiasm. But they get things back on track with an epic new tune, Weeds, a trip-hop thumper that suggests a cross between Girls Aloud and Radiohead.
From there it’s into top gear with Round Round, the sort of effortlessly effervescent pop that many of their early-2000s contemporaries attempted but could never pull off. The encore is even better as they rip through their Tubeway Army-sampling cover of Adina Howard’s Freak Like Me and the bittersweet barnstormer About You Now.
The latter is a heartfelt chugger that the trio, having changed into tracksuits, turn into a divine singalong. With old tensions smoothed over, Sugababes’ Easter return to Dublin is a steamroller of peerless pop and sisterhood rekindled.
