Live Review: Ben Howard

As the lights eventually went down at the Hordern Pavilion (has an artist ever set foot on stage on time?) deafening applause echoed around the venue as the last of the bar stragglers came rushing in, arms full of tinnies.

English singer Ben Howard appeared on stage with minimal fuss, easing the crowd in with the quietly atmospheric Conrad, before heading straight into I Forget Where We Were. Throughout the gig, he continued to live up to the label “reluctant star”, either being lit from behind so you could only see his silhouette or deftly sidestepping head-on spotlights, choosing to sing from the shadows instead. Ben Howard is every lighting guy’s nightmare…

After a typically Ben Howard-ified, almost unrecognisable version of Jessie Ware’s Wildest Moments (always the sign of a good cover), the audience lapped up In Dreams, Keep Your Head Up and Small Things. 

The entire show was a PDA-ridden affair, with loved-up couples left, right and centre. We’re happy we brought a friend along as we discovered that the epitome of loneliness would 100 per cent be standing alone at a Ben Howard gig on a Saturday night. Surely nothing would make you drunk dial your exes more? 

Howard ended the affair with, err, End Of The Affair, the stage bathed in blue light which, with our eyesight, looked like there’d been a bit of an accident with an Avatar. While the audience was mesmerised by the song’s crescendo, the mass exodus during the single song encore of Esmerelda (from 2012’s The Burgh Island EP) suggests that that particular song choice may have been a bit of a faux pas. But hey, when you can fill a venue as large as the Hordern with the young and beautiful on a Saturday night, you can do what you bloody well like.