Sydney Entertainment Centre
Friday, March 1, 2013:
There is a distinctly pre-pubescent vibe in the air when arriving at an Ed Sheeran concert, as most of you can imagine. There are homemade signs, face paint and matching t-shirts absolutely everywhere and don’t even get me started on the screaming. But annoying patrons aside, the largest ever headline show for Sheeran turned out to be one of his finest to date and highlighted many of Ed’s performance talents, which aren’t on display within his studio recordings.
Providing the main support for the evening was the constantly touring Passenger, who managed to convert thousands of screaming girls into his latest avid admirers. Mike Rosenberg’s stage presence is phenomenal, his charm, wit and energy is incredibly captivating and despite his lack of experience on an arena stage, he owned the spotlight and demanded everyone’s attention. His 30 minute set allocation was far too short and almost anyone in the crowd would’ve been perfectly happy to listen to him all night, a truly perfect choice of support.
After a relatively short interval, the girls were in prime position ready to scream their hearts out for their favourite ginger idol. Ed came to the stage with barely any form of introduction and powered straight into his set of heart warming pop songs with his one of his more recent platinum singles ‘Give Me Love,’ sending the crowd into an absolute frenzy.
Sheeran’s crowd interaction is certainly a great asset to his live performance, whilst all completely rehearsed of course, he was always demanding interaction and conducting the crowd like a true performer. But this was really put to the test during his more intimate songs where he, despite his best efforts, couldn’t contain the ear splitting screams.
To compliment the audience however, they are very well trained in remembering lyrics, which from a performers point of view is amazing, you could see Ed getting a bit of a buzz from the rapturous responses to his songs, but you could also notice a few of the parents in the crowd becoming a tad concerned when their teens are passionately screaming out lyrics about alcohol abuse, pregnancy and prostitution, or maybe that’s just me.
Considering the size of the venue and Sheeran’s popularity, it does come as a surprise that his performances are without live accompaniment, just himself, a guitar and looping station on hand. This being said, his true talent does lie in his looping skills, effortlessly creating perfect harmonies and rhythms essentially negating the need for a band.
His set was well rehearsed and was filled with basically every song from his debut album, +, as well as some pretty decent covers ranging from Macklemore to Nina Simone. Overall, the performance was really great, Sheeran’s experience and confidence has considerably grown over the past 2 years of touring and whilst his target audience was unbearably loud and frustrating to be with, he gave them exactly what they wanted and more.
Reviewer: Josh Clements
Photographer: David Youdell
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