Live Review: Griff - Alexandra Palace - London, 13/11/2024
Griff effortlessly graces Ally Pally.
On a buzzing Wednesday night at Ally Pally, support comes from Aziya, a singer full of energy who instantly connects with the predominantly young female crowd. Her rocky sound comes through on lively songs like ‘Crush’ which is affectionately named after the lead singer of the band Television Tom Verlaine. She cheekily joked with the crowd that her ex ”Looked like Tom but just not as attractive and with half the talent!”. Her performance warmed up the crowd brilliantly and set the tone for a buzzing night ahead.
Griff appears on the stage of Alexandra Palace, whose famous facade has been lit up with her trademark spirals. Her tour supports debut album ‘Vertigo’, released in July and she starts the show with the album title track. With her image projected onto two giant curtains hanging either side of the stage, her vocal delivery of the second chorus: ‘I thought that I could be the one to change you, I thought that I could be the one to prove, I’m used to fixing broken things before, I thought maybe I could fix you too’ seems to strike a chord as many a twenty something couple wistfully sing back the words with a collective sense of empathy.
She humbly acknowledge her dizzying ascent to stardom from her early days playing on the smaller venue circuit: “In 2019 I was playing to 300 people in Hoxton Hall and now look at me! Nothing feels better than playing in my hometown in London”. Her career has been in steep ascent since she won the Rising Star award at the 2021 Brit Awards, becoming one of the youngest winners in the category at only 20, and releasing her debut single ‘Mirror Talk’, immediately after she had finished her A Level exams. No stranger to large arenas the following two years saw hugely deserved support slots with the likes of Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa.
This momentum has swiftly built as Taylor Swift herself handpicked Griff as a support for her second London date of her Eras tour at Wembley Stadium in June, plus a support slot on Sabrina Carpenter’s US tour.
Documenting the real-life disorientation of her whirlwind rise and “The idea that the world is spinning faster than you can keep up with”, ‘Vertigo’ captures the highs and lows of a young woman discovering her potential on an international stage- all while navigating existential anxieties and trepidations of the heart- a hugely powerful theme that she explores with an astute maturity.
Fourth track ‘Hiding Alone’ is a a dance driven toe tapper that perfectly balances the dark and the light and gets everybody smoothly into an early groove in the Grand Hall tonight.
Her uncanny knack for star collaboration is showcased tonight as fellow rising star Holly Humberstone joins her for a delightful acoustic duet on ‘So fast’, their clear chemistry melting hearts tonight as they bounce off each other before and after their joint effort.
Her performance finds new dexterity during the encore with ‘Astronaut’, a song she co wrote with Chris Martin, who provides the stirring piano on the album. Griff switches from breathy gasps to yearning cries, her tongue-in-cheek lyricism lightening even her most delicate moments, especially with the exquisitely wry wordplay of the unforgettable lyric to a lover: “You said that you needed space, Go on then astronaut.”
It made perfect sense to name her first album ‘Vertigo’, a word which captures the sensation of her vertiginous rise. “I’ve been seeing the word in an emotional sense,” she said so eloquently in an aside to her adoring crowd:”this feeling of being unbalanced and a bit upside down” which rang a chord.
Speaking to Rolling Stone earlier this month about processing the sheer scale of this tour, she says “I’m excited and nervous too, because even though the arenas (supporting other artists) were big, I’m about to play my biggest room in London, Alexandra Palace, which is massive. It’s like thousands and thousands. It feels challenging in a good way”. In a refreshingly modest manner she says: “I’ve just done everything in the wrong order, and I’ve toured so much [with other artists] but I haven’t actually done my own shows yet”. Tonight Ally Pally truly is her own for everyone to share on her phenomenal ride to her future superstardom - catch her at her next show and embrace the Vertigo.
Words by Brendan Sharp
Photography by Katie McLellan-Salisbury
