Lewis CapaldiMarlay Park, Dublin★★★★☆CMAT’s star is rising so quickly that seeing her as an opening act now feels like catching something rare. On a sunny evening in Marlay Park, she arrives in red tights and a dress with newspaper print. “I’m from Dublin slash Meath,” she shouts. She is a superabundantly talented performer on home ground, and she’s playful with the audience, getting us doing a two-step. When she spots one reluctant participant she singles him out. “Even you with the hat,” she sings. “You’re still not doing it.”For an hour, she delivers her gorgeous, glittering, country-inflected pop songs. I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby! Is the height of the performance, a witty and weird elegy about modern life that has most of the audience singing even the prechorus: “Always a cowboy, never a cow, I hate the way my life turned out.”[ Lewis Capaldi at Marlay Park: Set list, ticket information, how to get there and moreOpens in new window ]At first glance, CMAT and Lewis Capaldi make little sense together. But both succeed for similar reasons: authenticity, and a lack of interest in being cool. Capaldi takes to the stage in black jeans and a black T-shirt, and starts straight away with Hollywood, a newer song about the alienation that comes with fame. His vocal delivery is impressive, and there are no elaborate visuals or stagecraft to distract from it. The set list is star-studded: Grace, Bruises, Wish You the Best, Pointless, Before You Go and The Day That I Die are all rendered faithfully, his voice charged with emotion, and the crowd sings back every word. In a world oversaturated with gravelly-voiced earnest balladeers, what makes Capaldi not just likable, but believable? It’s the feeling that there’s nothing cynical about him. He never seems to have wanted to be a superstar, or particularly enjoyed it once he became one. He took a two-year hiatus, struggles with stage fright, is often visibly anxious and crying at his own gigs, and lives with Tourette syndrome. He’s open with his fans about all of it.His songs are crowd-pleasers. Someone You Loved is apparently the most-streamed song ever in the UK. Yet he’s not a critical darling. More sophisticated, or just irony-poisoned listeners find his songwriting gauche and simplistic; his songs can feel indistinguishable from one another. They’re often built from the same toolkit: familiar piano-led chord progressions, melodies that climb steadily towards a cathartic high note. And it’s true that he trades in cliche.But standing in Marlay Park, the cliches layer into something moving. Because no matter how unique you’d like to believe any romance is, it always comes down to the same universal facts: when I was with you, it felt like nothing else. I hate to think of you with someone else. I loved you and it hurt when you left. (Although, interestingly, a good proportion of the crowd is far too young to have experienced such romantic anguish.)It’s good to see Capaldi doing well. He’s relentlessly charming, a foul mouthed Scottish lad, self-aware about his material, and very funny. “Mosh pit,” he jokes before launching into another sad piano ballad.[ Getting to and from Marlay Park concerts: ‘The ticket was €80 ... the taxi home was €70’Opens in new window ]A proposal somewhere in the crowd prompts immediate mock outrage. “Don’t ever steal my spotlight again.”Rumours of a surprise appearance by Niall Horan are dismissed. “Niall’s not f**king here.”Then comes the encore, and Someone You Loved. He sings it like he means every word, the crowd sings it back, and fireworks explode over Marlay Park.