Ella Eyre

I might as well come out and say it - I've come into this gig with something of a hesitancy about me, rather drastically unsure about whatever it is that's about to unfold at the Waterfront tonight. I'm not too up on this popular music lark. This isn't helped when Eyre rolls out in her hi tops to set the tone with her opener only to find her mic isn't working. After half a track of the sound team scrambling to replace equipment someone somewhere hits a reset button. Hold your breath. Count to three. We go again. And we go big. Whether this has fired Eyre up even more or not is hard to say but, gosh darn, she's bringing it. Before this show even I knew the massive hair, the huge voice. These are givens. Actually, I don't know whether it's just an illusion conjured by the wild protein filaments cascading from the top of her head or not, but the twenty-year-old seems to be filling the stage with an unabating intensity as each and every second roars past. Eyre's utter domination of the space around her is outstanding, and I've rarely seen anyone perspire with so much sass. As a high-tempo solo performer she's everything you need.The set itself is decent and obviously peaks during the most well known material. I can't help but sense a touch of wash/rinse/repeat with some of the tracks on show, but to be honest the way that Eyre's vocal shimmies, twirls and bites through the air means that she's always going to get away with it, especially with a crowd as reactive as this. With any style of sound, if you bring together a committed audience with an artist elevating and owning what they do for the live scene, you invariably end up with the potent mix that great gigs are made of. This is exactly that, and there are a plenty here that, I'm sure, are being blown away by this. Hell, even I nearly am. Being as detached as I am from the R&B world, there's not really much greater praise I can give. Geez, I might even go back next time.