LIVE REVIEWS
It’s perfect that Alexandra Palace, the 10,000-capacity venue that sees Fred Again.. play a four-night mini residency this week, offers one of the most humbling views of London – skyscrapers, intersections, houses and all. All those people, all those lives.
The 30-year-old super-producer’s music, a mix of ambient house and techno through which he weaves voice notes of friends and strangers alike, magically turning their words into anthemic lyrics about community and connection, clearly captured some kind of zeitgeist in the pandemic. Having graduated from producing for the likes of Ed Sheeran and Rita Ora, he’s created something close to his own musical language via his ‘Actual Life’ series of three albums and an EP, the latter of which was released two months into Covid. It’s easy to see why: this is deeply emotional dance music that found its audience at a time when we couldn’t see our loved ones and dancing was out of the question.
So tonight marks a milestone. With precisely 35,246 tickets shifted for the four shows, all of which sold out instantly, it’s as much a belated celebration of being on the other side of that dreadful period as it is of Fred Gibson’s rise. The atmosphere outside Ally Pally seems more like that of a festival than of a Tuesday night gig. Groups of friends wrap their arms around one another for photos in front of that killer view; a snapshot in time.
What follows is an audiovisual experience that combines more homey looking videos with a stunning light show – at one point, the ceiling is illuminated by dangling red bulbs that throb against the darkened venue – and music that shifts between massive and muted.
It turns out those keyrings are intended to cover your iPhone torch. When everyone fires them up it should create, in Fred’s words, “a sea of blue”. Yet that’s not the piece de resistance: this occurs when he disappears among the crowd to reappear at the other end of the venue, where he continues the performance from a podium over which hangs a screen that bathes him in light. It looks like something from Kanye’s ‘The Life of Pablo’ era. The whole thing is often astonishing, though the keyring trick doesn’t quite come off and hushed piano interludes rob the show of its momentum.
Outside, afterwards, looking down across the city, 27-year-old fan Charlotte summons the intimate spirit of the night: “At one point, I closed my eyes and thought I was the only person there for a bit.” 23-year-old Prav, meanwhile, hails the “interactive” elements of the performance that saw Fred move out amongst the crowd – the physical manifestation of the producer’s relationship with his audience. Together they capture the unique way in which Gibson’s music has resonated with people as both a vehicle for connection and a balm for the soul.
Another fan tells NME that Fred’s music is “so personal” and that she heard the first ‘Actual Life’ album after she’d to London from Dublin. “I didn’t know anyone in London,” she says, “and his voice notes… it was like I had a mate over here.”
She then shares a deeply personal story about losing her father during this period and explains that tonight marks her third anniversary in the city. Fred, she says, “got me though a lot of shit”. Before we part, she locks eyes and implores: “If you know him, please tell him thanks so much for helping me get to this place.”
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’
