An energetic step towards stardom
Sigrid Shepherd’s Bush Empire ★★★★☆
Great things are expected of Sigrid, the Norwegian pop starlet who won the BBC’S Sound of 2018 poll. On the surface, the excitement might seem premature. Last year’s debut single,
Don’t Kill My Vibe, was only a minor hit here (it reached 62 in the UK charts). Yet there was something about its sensitive yet confrontational stance that captured the mood of the moment, a feminist anthem that seemed to anticipate the #Metoo movement. And in person, the 21-year-old has an infectious, gamine energy and enthusiasm that is hard to resist.
You could get exhausted just watching her perform, so rarely does she stay still. Long, dark hair tied up in a functional ponytail, dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans, she bounced incessantly around as if conducting an aerobics dance class, continually bending, dipping, jumping and punching, covering every inch of the stage. She leapt on to raised podiums on which stood her four-piece band, ducking under the keyboards, cavorting gleefully around the drums, emotionally hugging her backing vocalist. She only really stood still for a pair of stripped-back ballads, suddenly and effortlessly commanding rapt, silent attention from a young London crowd at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
Hailing from Bergen, where, she pointed out, “it always rains”, Sigrid Solbakk Raabe (you can see why she shortened her name) is actually quite an odd pop star. The four singles released thus far have gone for a shiny, percussive, anthemic sound, yet in the context of her whole set something a bit deeper and quirkier emerges.
Her style is very Scandinavian in its potency and use of weird, folky harmonies – you could imagine her crooning the theme tune to some dark Nordic noir. As a singer-songwriter, she has some of the tremulous intensity of ethereal Swedish cult star Stina Nordenstam but fused with bright modern pop dynamics. Her lyrics are wordy and philosophical, her melodies intricate and expansive. Songs often start from delicate beginnings before exploding into life. She has a wide vocal range but a very direct singing style, with no soul or R’N’B fluctuations or grandstanding. When she really attacked a chorus, she sounded quite piercing and even scratchy – something that her broad smile suggested genuinely delighted her. She is pitching into artier, more expressive spaces currently occupied by Lorde and Christine and the Queens.
With a debut album due later this year, Sigrid still has to prove whether she can cross from hardcore young pop fans to a more mainstream audience. But you wouldn’t bet against someone with this kind of athletic ebullience and commitment. At the close of a triumphant show, she was moved to tears by the voluminous singalong response of the adoring audience, holding the microphone out to the crowd when she became too emotional to sing. She wasn’t about to let a little thing like losing her voice kill her vibe.