Coming towards the end of the UK leg of his current tour, Tom Grennan was starting to struggle with a sore throat but the show must go on and he did so with so much swagger that you’d barely have suspected he wasn’t feeling 100%.
Ably supported by Cuckoolander and Ten Tonnes, both bands fitted in with the vibe of the headline act. They got the crowd going from early on as the club started to fill more and more as it got closer to Tom’s set.
Strutting on stage for his set with a mug of hot lemon, ginger and honey, Grennan was full of platitudes about loving being back in Glasgow, “a year ago we were at King Tut’s, now we’re here at the O2 ABC!”.
Something that really shocked about seeing his perform live was that he actually sounded even better than he does on his records, a rarity for a lot of acts these days. His voice was so soulful and, if anything, the sore throat added to the rasp in his voice.
Some of the highlights of his set included his singles ‘Found What I’ve Been Looking For’ and ‘Sober’, which is currently getting a lot of radio airplay and had the whole crowd singing along.
Tom was also game for a laugh. Before singing his collaboration with Chase and Status ‘All Goes Wrong’, he joked about welcoming them on stage… before admitting he’d cracked that joke every night of the tour and it never got old.
With his debut album Lighting Matches not out until July, Grennan said he didn’t want to play the whole record in his set so as to leave something for his fans to look forward to. With a minimal back catalogue so far, his set was only about an hour long but he made the most of every minute. Every track had the audience singing and dancing along, particularly big belting tracks like his single ‘Royal Highness’.
If this show proved one thing, it’s that he’s clearly ambitious. Throughout the show he got everyone chanting about getting his album to number one and there were looks of glee on peoples’ faces when he said that he’d be back in Glasgow in a few months for the TRNSMT festival.
Closing the show with an acoustic rendition of ‘Something in the Water’ was a bold move but a perfect way to end the albeit brief concert. It really highlighted his husky vocals by just having him on stage with an acoustic guitar.
Tom is definitely a star in the making, with bucket-loads of charisma and talent. All aboard the Grennan Express… choo choo!
4 out of 5
Check out the video for Tom Grennan’s latest single ‘Sober’ here:
Music editor
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