Originally from Waterford but now living in London, Moncrieff is a rising star of Irish pop, a singer capable of flitting across genres with ease, and one with a truly spectacular live show given weight by his distinctive and powerful voice.

Moncrieff sings from the heart, and despite his rapid progress to a level that enabled him to sell out – and quickly – the Olympia Theatre this week, the isolation of the music industry through Covid almost saw him say goodbye to it completely. Instead, he’s flying as high as he’s ever been.

“I’m getting a good bit of support on radio across Ireland, it’s growing a lot quicker than in London, so the shows feel a bit different,” he says. “Irish fans are great for supporting their own.”

“The EP, ‘Warm’, is a bit Covid-linked,” he says. “The first year of the pandemic, after it settled, I fell into this dark enough place where I didn’t really think music was going to come back. I thought about calling it quits. Kind of in the middle of that, ‘Warm’ was written, and became the catalyst for just having another crack at making really personal and honest songs. That’s where the EP comes from.”

“I was doing a lot of online live stuff at the time. It was fun but it also became kind of tedious, I wasn’t too sure of myself or where I was going, yet the online stuff gradually started to grow. Some of them were amazing for my mental health, and others weren’t good.”

The return has been spectacular. “Playing big stages like Electric Picnic… it’s been the biggest summer of my career and I’m trying to take it all in. I’m still not used to people singing my words back to me. It feels so fresh, and I love performing live. These songs were born to be performed to people, and sung back. It’s such a beautiful thing to hear people sing songs back to you that are about hope, essentially.”