CityLife

Ellie Goulding

Ellie Goulding
Club Academy
March 30, 2010

Squeezed on to the narrow confines of the Club Academy stage, Ellie Goulding and her band are firing out bolts of pop attitude big enough to take out the lighting rig.

The 300 or so capacity venue is an ill fit for the excitement that now surrounds Ellie’s career following her massive kick into the mainstream with a Brits Critics’ Choice gong, that Sound Of crown and a No.1 debut album.

There’s a tangible sense of smugness among the punters – a gaggle of Ellie wannabes with hippie bangs and sticky stars on their faces, plus their indie boyfriends and their informed parents – that this will be one of those gigs they boast about for years to come.

And even as that smugness turns into impatience when Ellie turns up late for this very important date, the Alice In Wonderland of electro-folk finally emerges for her debut headline tour – all wide-eyes and ambition – ready to prove a point.

No one, though, expects her to do it quite so conclusively. Her album – albeit a chart topper – doesn’t quite conjure up the full magic of Ellie’s musical vision. It sounds almost too perfect (even with that voice to work with, her producer couldn’t resist a little autotune) and glitters with the kind of polish that usually implies mixing desk trickery.

The live experience of Lights – the album’s title track – proves why Goulding is a little let down by her record. At it swells explosively from gentle folk, strummed out by Ellie on a big acoustic guitar, to urgent electro-pop, it’s at least 100 times more exciting than its recorded counterpart.

And it’s not alone. Every Time You Go frames Ellie’s peculiar diction and fluttery vocal with some clever samples of her own harmonies while Guns & Horses (her next single) allows her to play with the folk style that dominated her early writing.

It’s a gentle lament, but burgeoning with enough attitude to propel the set onwards through 1980s-inspired anthems like Your Biggest Mistake and I’ll Hold My Breath and keep lighter-aloft (or camera phone-aloft) moments like The Writer from sounding like a Miley Cyrus cover.

The singles – Under The Sheets and the Alphabeat-esque Starry Eyed – both confirm Ellie really can rock harder than her album implies. Whether she’s strumming out a big chorus or battering her stand-up drum in the strobelight, she’s an utterly energising performer.

But it’s her voice that steals the show. It sounds tiny on the surface, but there’s remarkable power in it: it’s breathy, sweet and uncommonly pretty, a mix of Cerys Matthews and The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler.

If there’s one thing likely to keep Ellie a going concern when the fascination with electro moves on, it’s those dazzling vocal chords.

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