Adele, Southampton Guildhall (From Daily Echo)

Adele, Southampton Guildhall

8:51am Thursday 21st April 2011 in Music Reviews

Adele, Southampton Guildhall

FLAWLESS ballads mixed with a healthy dose of audience banter.

Adele let her voice do the talking as she produced hit after hit from her current and back catalogue, drawing a sold-out audience in with her unmistakeable voice and cackle and plenty of witty anecdotes involving everything from her mum’s paragliding adventures to Peggy from Eastenders.

An astonishingly good set got under way with debut single Hometown Glory, during which the Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter gave us all goosebumps.

With just her, her band and a few mood-enhancing lampshades for company on stage, she proved she didn’t need all the fancy pyrotechnics we have all come to expect from touring live acts.

It was just Adele and her guitar for the evening’s undoubted highlight – a spine-tingling finale rendition of Rolling in the Deep. With an awe-inspiring authority to her voice, she seemed to swing effortlessly from slow numbers like an emotionally- charged Take It All and Turning Tables to more uptempo tracks like Right as Rain and I’ll Be Waiting. Other highlights included superb covers of If It Hadn’t Been For Love by The Steeldrivers, Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love and The Cure’s Lovesong.

Adele has come a long way since bursting into the limelight with Chasing Pavements, another great moment in the set.

She is clearly going places, her already huge popularity rocketing since that show-stealing Brit awards performance earlier this year.

An encore of Someone Like You had the gathered masses looking on in sheer amazement. For this audience, it was a rare treat to encounter an act of this calibre in the flesh.