Live Review: Adam French - Oslo, London 01/04/2019

The self-taught Cheshire native Adam French was at hand to give the people of London a breath of fresh air from all the rain and political mayhem that has engulfed the country.

Adam French stopped by Oslo in Hackney, London as part of a tour promoting his new album ‘The Back Foot and Rapture’. Upon arriving to the venue, it was already starting to get quite busy which was great to see! Two acts on this evening, Jasmine Thompson and Adam French. I found that odd as I am used to going to shows with at least three acts on the bill, in any case, Jasmine was up first. Jasmine’s set consisted of 5-6 songs rounding up to around 20ish minutes of performance which was a shame as I enjoyed her songs and hoped that it was going to be at least the regular 30 minutes. Jasmine’s set up was very simple but effective, most of the set was her beautiful vocal and an accompanying keyboard but for a couple of the songs in the set she had friends join her on stage to play violin and Cello. The crowd really enjoyed the warm up act of the evening!

With Jasmine’s set finished and lots of Adam French fans starting to pile in, it was getting a little bit cramped as the venue looked like it was maybe 250-300 cap. Adam finally hit the stage with a slow opener to ease the crowd in to what was a stupidly good performance, each track was performed with absolute excellence and every note on point. We were also treated to two brand new tracks in the 50-minute set with Adam teasing that album number two was currently being worked on.

Throughout the show Adam had the audience in the palm of his hand, getting us to sing along and have a laugh with him as he cracked the odd joke onstage. The highlights of the evening were Ivory, Weightless (a personal favourite of mine) and More to Life but that is not to say that any of the other tracks were weak by any means. Once the show was over Adam came out to meet and greet eagerly awaiting fans, chatting away with them all, taking selfie’s and signing CD’s and Vinyl’s of his new album, what a nice bloke! Overall, an effing good evening!

Photography and words by Pete Herbert