With a line that reached across the twelve hours prior to the concert, the pre-teen anticipation for Ed Sheeran’s second Adelaide show was suffocatingly tangible.
Supported by UK musicians Gabrielle Alpin and Passenger (the stage moniker of Mike Rosenberg), Sheeran showcased his multi-platinum album + to the sold out crowd at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.
A sea of faces bathed in pink light welcomed Alpin, the first support act. Missing her band, her set experienced a slightly less built up sound that the recorded versions hold.
However, undeterred by this, Alpin enveloped the entire room in intimate sweetness with her enchanting vocals. As streams of green light filled with smoke across the venue, the singer floated through her “Please Don’t Say You Love Me” with a soothing wistfulness.
Introducing her final song, “Home”, with dreamy gratitude, Alpin fell into the beautiful sentiment of love that flowered around the microphone and blanketed the audience.
The always-humble Passenger, ending each song with sincere gratitude for the response he was receiving, joked his way through his set with the earnest informality his shows are characterised by.
A reverent rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” saw the venue in a dead quiet, which was broken only as Rosenberg built towards the climax of the song.
With the power of his voice exploding in flaming excitement, the young-faced crowd reflected this excitement straight back to him. Following this with his own “I Hate”, “Let Her Go”, and “Holes”, he asked each onlooker to sing along to the choral section of each number; Passenger ended his set to raucous applause and many a new fan.
A wave of enthusiasm ripped through the masses, with tides of teenage girls falling purposefully towards the stage that held the young singer-songwriter, Ed Sheeran.
With the enormous conviction of a much more experienced musician, the 22-year-old swooned his way into his massive hit “Give Me Love” to deafening screams that followed him relentlessly throughout his set.
Crooning carelessly through the shattering applause, Sheeran breathed a heavy sense of emotion into the lyrics. With collapsing guitar riffs and crying romanticisms crawling deeply through the soul of the song, he built the instrumental sections towards the height of the venue, only to have them crash heavily around his desperate fans.
A natural performer, Sheeran interacted confidently with the gathering before him, holding a casual familiarity with each onlooker.
The strength of his unrelenting hold over the audience was undeniable, as they rapturously followed every instruction given to them. Showcasing his enormous talent with the calm clarity of a recording, and the musical enormity of a live performance, the entire centre was lit by the constant shine of LCD screens, as each new song overtook the former in grandeur and intensity.
Falling into the lyrics with the crushing gravity his talent allows, Sheeran cruised through “Drunk”, “Grade 8”, “U.N.I.” and “Small Bump” with an unfaltering ease.
Finishing with his hopelessly romantic “Lego House”, the headliner thanked each person there for participating and strutted off with the nonchalance of his age. A wall of screams tumbled through the arena, with pleas for an encore following as he wandered backstage.
This plea was heard as Sheeran skipped into view with a wave, a quick word of thanks and jumped straight back into his performance.
Interjected with lyrics from Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”, Sheeran’s own freestyling, “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” was stretched towards the 15-minute mark.
The show came to an end with a darkly powerful rendition of “The A Team”. The entire arena, lit universally with swaying torches, was an astral backdrop to the crumbling strength of the lyrics – a sentiment to the desperation of the song.
A waterfall of dazed listeners flowed through the exits and out onto the street, holding quietly onto their indefinable gratitude for this incredible performer.
The only disappointment of Sheeran’s live show was that it left one with the inability to listen to his recordings in the same light, without forlornly mediating on the experience shared with thousands of others.
