Live Review: Adele

For the first time since 1975, the Brisbane masses welcome the return of music to The Gabba with the arrival of British (and global) pop sensation Adele this Saturday night.

The hotly anticipated and long awaited first of two Brisbane shows kicks off the second leg of Adele’s first Australian tour, and concert-goers of all ages and walks of life bring the traffic at Woolloongabba to a standstill as they excitedly shuffle their way into the stalls and arena floor seating area.

In a move rarely seen on large-scale tours, Adele’s performance does not see the billing of an opening act to warm up the crowd… but, quite frankly, she doesn’t need one. The audience appears more than happy to mingle around their seating areas, sipping wine, joining in a Mexican wave and taking the opportunity to snap a selfie in front of the towering lighting monolith in centre field, encompassed by a circular screen exhibiting a black and white montage of Adele’s closed eyes.

The Gabba’s blinding spotlights are shut off at 7.50pm, plunging the stadium into darkness and giving way to the somewhat-terrifying lung capacities of 60,000 fans, and so the show begins. The reverberation thundering through eight hanging speaker columns sends the suspense into overdrive. At last, a "Hello?" echoes through the stadium and the eyes open with a blaze of white light. The eyes blink with each repeated greeting and the colossal circular screen gradually ascends its tower to reveal Adele on stage in a regal wine-red silk and crystal-encrusted gown. Long live the Queen!

She launches into Hello and impresses audiences with a vocally flawless first number. She takes her time to walk around the stage and waves at her audience with a smile of pure elation. Hometown Glory is accompanied by a montage of smoggy London before shifting to images of our own Brisbane at night. Deafening woops go up in the air as footage of Southbank, the CBD and the Story Bridge hits the screens. The crowd relaxes contently into the sassy reflection of One & Only. The increasing glimmers of Adele’s Tottenham accent and cheeky grins show her to be easing into her newly acquired shoes as a stadium performer.

She takes a five-minute respite to greet the crowd in a side-splittingly funny and endearing ramble to assist in controlling her nerves. In true Pommy fashion, she even has a couple of cups of tea(?) provided for her on stage. Adele has already won over the audience as a singer, and now her dialogue brings them to fall in love with Adele the person. In a way that any Aussie can appreciate, there are no put-on airs and graces about the Brit. She talks with a casual warmth and isn’t afraid to poke fun at herself, even demonstrating that she is willing to own up to instances where she feels she might have hit a “funny note”. While most in the audience would be oblivious, her candour only leads the crowd to respect her more as she invites them to share in her own humanity.

Adele pumps up the crowd for the grooving vibes of I’ll Be Waiting, saying it will be our “only chance to dance”. The energy of this track paves the way for the call-to-arms drum beat and shade-throwing lyrics of Rumour Has It, Adele making transitions between head and chest voice with a dexterity many would fall short of. The song finishes with frenzied high-register piano arpeggios and a glissando as Adele bares her teeth in a half-snarl (to match the sass of the song), which quickly fades into a broad smile. Water Under The Bridge produces a stadium-wide sing-a-long, and I Miss You delivers the best of Adele’s commanding and sultry vocal timbre. When she produces a note of almost-overwhelming power, she balances its potency by side-stepping into head voice to smooth the contour of the vocal line.

A striking point of Adele’s performance is the absence of synthesised sound, instead accompanied by a small band including a grand piano, electric guitar, bass, drum kit and the rich tones of three back-up singers. In her next in-between-songs chat, Adele weighs in on the controversy surrounding her appearance at the Gabba. She lets fly in a tone of pure cheek, "I think they should shut up with their bloody moanin’, fuckin’ hell…I’ve come from fuckin’ London," to which the crowd bursts out laughing and cheers in solidarity. She introduces the audience to the suited-up male choir who would be accompanying Skyfall with, "I thought I told you to come shirtless at the next show, guys…". This number is everything you’d hope a 007 theme would be, ominous with a hint of intrigue delivered by the brass. The only way it could be improved is for the male vocalists to have their mics turned up a smidge to really get those lower notes thundering through the stadium (and our loins!).

Adele continues to delight with country-inspired Don’t You Remember and her cover of Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love. Amid her asking, the audience is already lifting their phone lights to sing along to this immortal ode to love. Adele summons her lower register from the depths of her core to glaze Send My Love (To Your New Lover) in rich vocal layers, and shares the story behind Sweetest Devotion with the audience, lightheartedly musing on how, if she had had it her way, 25 (2015) would’ve been solely about her son.

She lays bare her vulnerability in Chasing Pavements and Take It All, expressing sentiments of indecision, grief and the distress of unanswered questions, and concludes the main part of her set with Set Fire To the Rain, which showcases her distinguishing blend of finely crafted yet down-to-earth love songs with vocal complexity. The final chorus ends with smoke cannons firing into the air to cloak the stage in a curtain of white. The Brisbane crowd are treated to a thrilling firework display (unfortunately, Perth missed out) and showers of confetti, multi-coloured and white with handwritten lyrics.

In the minutes prior to the encore, the audience is kept entertained by Kiss-Cams showing up on the screen. This interactive moment brings laughter and smiles to the crowd as couples of all ages and orientations are celebrated. Adele finally re-emerges on stage rocking a classy blue-black velvet suit. The audience gets to their feet for the final songs and belt out their hearts to nostalgic number When We Were Young. In tradition with saving the best for last, Rolling In The Deep and Someone Like You close the evening. Adele holds out her mic during for the audience to sing along, challenging Brisbane to sing louder than Perth. She shares the tale of how Someone Like You changed her life, and how it led her to reclaim her identity following a past relationship. Adele graciously thanks the Brisbane for coming to see her, and exits the stadium to the song’s unforgettable outro, which at long last fades as the stadium lights return to their full strength.

The soul-baring nature of Adele’s music combined with jazz and soul influences breathes new life into the simple pop ballad and reaffirms its confessional capabilities as a soothing balm to emotional scars, new and old. She proves that you don’t need razzamatazz to entertain and engage an audience, by reaching the balance between an extravagant stage with an effervescent and deeply personal performance practice. There are celebrated pop musicians who fall into the trap of trying to sell a story with over-production or choreography. The difference is that Adele simply tells her story and, in many ways, we find that it’s our story too.