LIVE REVIEWS
“Stop, I’m fucked!” declares a wickedly giddy Robbie Williams as a play-pretend gurn begins to creep across his face. Yet the biggest risk to health and safety as the singer closes out night one of Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival 2023 isn’t any of his suggested personal vices. Instead, it’s the risk of human towers collapsing as Williams breaks into a rollicking rendition of 1997’s ‘Let Me Entertain You’ – audience members rush to lift one another on their shoulders in a scene of pantomime-level chaos. “I’m so fucking famous,” Williams says in response, cackling as he prowls down the stage’s runway and prompts another wave of ecstatic screams to rip through the festival grounds.
This is Williams distilled to his purest form: all of his firecracker energy barely fits on the festival’s eponymous main stage. Having been “mainly” sober for 20 years, he tells us, and happily married with four kids, the global star gives his Mad Cool headline slot his all, amping up the theatrics at every given opportunity. When he’s not ricocheting between hits like ‘Feel’ and ‘Kids’, he’s rambling through showbiz anecdotes at a leisurely storyteller’s pace, imparting questionable advice like a lad who has spent his entire night talking shit in the smoking area. It’s both sublime and ridiculous at once.
Such self-awareness is part of his charm, though, as is his willingness to engage directly with the audience. Throughout a riotous ‘Candy’ he references the Oprah ‘you get a car’ meme as he throws t-shirts into the crowd, before breaking into the track’s chant-along chorus. He’s not above offering an Oasis cover either, leaning forward and arching his head up towards the mic stand as he sings ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ with genuine sincerity. Later, he has a go at ‘Could It Be Magic’ before giving up. “I can’t be bothered,” Williams exclaims through laughter. “Between me and you, I don’t think Take That were ever big in Spain.” He almost immediately follows this up with a 30 second-long rendition of the US national anthem. Of course.
All this gives texture, drama and soul to a show that is unpredictable and human. As he introduces ‘Angels’ by talking about how he overcame a decade of mental health issues, it is clear that, for Williams, entertaining thousands of people at festivals like this one still acts as a healing salve. He is a performer with more than enough heart to match his humour.
‘Hey Wow Yeah Yeah’
‘Let Me Entertain You’
‘Monsoon’
‘Strong’
‘Come Undone’
‘Do What U Like’
‘Could It Be Magic’ (Barry Manilow cover)
‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ (Oasis cover)
‘The Flood’ (Take That cover)
‘Love My Life’
‘Candy’
‘Feel’
‘Kids’
‘Rock DJ’
‘No Regrets’
‘She’s The One’
‘Angel’
Kacey Musgraves has cast a spell across London’s Roundhouse. Dry ice shrouds the Texan artist and her 8-piece band in a hazy mist, the lighting dramatic – at times it evokes the break of dawn, others a thunderous rainstorm. And at the eye of this hurricane is Musgraves, her luminous vocals shining as brightly as the disco ball that’s illuminated during a rousing rendition of ‘Anime Eyes’. With the audience — who obey requests to be in the moment and not just view the gig through a lens — enraptured, the ethereal magic of the live show threads throughout.
Tonight’s gig is part of the ‘Deeper Well World Tour’, the shows accompanying Musgraves’ sixth studio album released earlier this year. It’s a record that saw her “navigating new beginnings”, as she said about its titular track: “Sometimes you reach a crossroads. Winds change direction. What you once felt drawn to doesn’t hold the same allure. You get blown off course but eventually find your footing and forage for new inspiration, new insight and deeper love somewhere else”. Or, as she more succinctly reflects in its chorus: “And I’ve got to take care of myself/I found a deeper well”.
This live setting, with the lush arrangements delivered by Musgraves’ double-denim clad band, is where the songs shine, the resilience and complex emotions they convey shining through. The power of opener ‘Cardinal’ ricochets through the venue accompanied by fleshed out instrumentals, while the lilting ‘The Architect’’s quietly questioning lyrics resonate in their subtle accompaniment.
Tracks that faded into the background on ‘Deeper Well’ at times work better here, too. ‘Jade Green’ is taken from a subdued slow burn into a thundering storm, Musgraves swathed in lights of the titular colour, strobes evoking lightning and crashes of percussion closing out the song, before the chaos subsides into a musical ‘Rainbow’. ‘Lonely Millionaire’, meanwhile, is elevated in this setting, the slinky track coming with mass sing-a-longs.
Yet for all the mysticism and magic when the music is playing, in-between songs Musgraves charms in a very different way. Her breezy wit juxtaposed with gut-wrenching music reminiscent of fellow on-stage entertainers Adele or Lewis Capaldi. As the band gear up for a quieter point in the set and huddle in closer at the front of the stage, Musgraves delights the audience with her tight-5 about the food poisoning and stomach upset she started the tour with, which soon spread around her touring party like wildfire. How did we get onto this story? An audience heckle that sounded a bit like a Spice Girl prompting Musgraves to reveal “I met Sporty the other day and almost shat myself! Speaking of…”
That’s not to say this humour isn’t also evident in Musgraves music — the excellent couplet “If you save yourself for marriage, you’re a bore/You don’t save yourself for marriage, you’re a hor-rible person” is sung with gusto by the crowd, in a stripped back rendition of ‘Follow Your Arrow’ (a cut from Musgraves’ debut studio record ‘Same Trailer Different Park’). And there’s rousing renditions of the jubilant kiss-off ‘High Horse’, and the eye-roll at an insecure ex on ‘Breadwinner’.
As she closes with a cover of Bob Marley & The Wailers’ ‘Three Little Birds’ and a short snippet of ‘Easier Said’, Musgraves tells the audience: “I hope your well has been deepened”. With the spell-binding communal magic of being in the moment and Musgraves’ powerhouse performance, we don’t doubt they have.
Kacey Musgraves played:
‘Cardinal’
‘Moving Out’
‘Deeper Well’
‘Sway’
‘Too Good to Be True’
‘Butterflies’
‘Happy & Sad’
‘Lonely Weekend’
‘Lonely Millionaire’
‘Follow Your Arrow’
‘The Architect’
‘Nothing to Be Scared Of’
‘Heaven Is’
‘Jade Green’
‘Rainbow’
‘Golden Hour’
‘Anime Eyes’
‘Don’t Do Me Good’
‘Justified’
‘Breadwinner’
‘High Horse’
‘Slow Burn’
‘Three Little Birds’ (Bob Marley & The Wailers cover)
‘Easier Said’
