Barry Egan: Lyra brings dance music salvation to adoring fans in Dublin’s 3Olympia

"That is to the best revenge," she said last night in front of 1,300 fans at her, yes, sold out show at Dublin's 3Olympia.

Memorable, emotional and engaging – to say nothing of entertaining – she wore her heart on her sleeve, as she always does.

Adele would be hard pressed to match a more powerful lyric than the song Lyra opened the show with, New Day.

“I'm gonna take all my loneliness," she sang. "I'm gonna take all my pain… And wrap them up in memory Never hear of them again."

She followed this cracker of a start with Lovers, Drink Me Up, 29 Box and Emerald. It was pretty much a party from then on.

Cork’s answer to (take your pick) Florence Ballard and Lady Gaga had the audience dancing like they were being guided by a giant, imaginary disco ball in the sky, under which they had no troubles, or if they did they could dance them away.

Dance music was their salvation and last night Lyra provided it.

She was the queen of eye-searingly kitsch dance moves, which at times bordered beautifully on interpretative dance, albeit in thigh-leather boots, space-age glasses and a bodystocking.

Her enthusiasm was infectious, as was her bad language in her hilarious monologues in the breaks between songs.

It was great to see an artist so obviously on a mission, so pumped up with drive and ambition. She certainly seized her moment last night with abandon when she came on at 9pm and didn’t let up – not once – until she left the stage to resounding applause at 10.15pm to Falling and Edge of 17. She didn’t stop to catch her breath.

When she sang, she became a shape-shifting future superstar – with a strident voice that with its gathering thunder, booms and echoes through the venue and all the way down Dame Street on a Saturday night with the power of the aforesaid Ms Ballard or at times even Adele (particularly on New Day and Falling ). Her vocal acrobatics, Olympic in scale, mark her out as a singer with a big future.

Filtered through Lyra’s kaleidoscope, it was a mixture of pop-ballads, sweeping, grandiose disco bangers, rousing electro-pop and bona fide good tunes, regardless of genre or labels you might want to put on them. The songs are intense. In between, she turned that intensity inward, telling the crowd about the ups and downs of various romances.

Her best songs (like New Day and Lovers) have her trademark autobiographical vulnerability as well as layers of nuance and ultimately some sort of hard-won if almost histrionic catharsis.

It is dance music as a self-interrogation. That is just a pretentious way of saying that your wan from Cork sings songs about heartbreak and bad relationships and healing from them and what she learned from it all.

She is no different from Adele, apart from a billion CD sales but you suspect if she keeps going like she did last night in Dublin Laura McNamara from Bandon will end up with her own residency in Las Vegas one day, her name across Broadway and beyond.