Smith shares from his heart at TD Garden
To many, Sam Smith’s singles sound indistinguishable from one another: mournful lyrics, magnetic melody, huge musical and emotional crescendo. This isn’t a knock on Smith — many find Ramones, Metallica and Grateful Dead songs indistinguishable from one another and they are icons. But on an LP, Smith can come off like an Adele understudy (true, a tremendous understudy).
In concert, Smith’s artistic uniformity, when spiked with a few big detours, can be a feature, not a bug. At his TD Garden gig Tuesday night, Smith — seated in a chair, brooding and big-voiced — opened with “Burning.”
Typical Smith, the song asks you to lean in to hear the whispered pain, then clobbers you with a gargantuan climax. He used the approach over and over again. And it worked over and over again.
The full house made up of mostly teen girls backed up his every word on the big ballads “I’m Not the Only One,” “Too Good at Goodbyes” and, of course, the encore, “Stay With Me.”
After admitting with a laugh that his music is “really depressing,” he laid into the love song “Lay Me Down” (kudos to Smith and his co-writers for coming up with one of the most epic bridges in modern pop). At the needle point of a triangular stage that reached out to center court, he hiked his voice up to his signature high-register cry for “I’ve Told You Now.”
Because he has so many midtempo hits, any deviation from them feels like a radical shift. “Omen,” one of his collaborations with the electronic duo Disclosure, boomed like a monster club jam. Rare Smith dance tunes “Money on My Mind” and “Like I Can” pushed back-to-back created a 10,000-strong discotheque. He nicely nodded to Lionel Richie on “Restart” and Marvin Gaye on “Baby, You Make Me Crazy.”
Just as his pop mostly skips the hip-hop beats, EDM drops and Dayglo synths, his live show has an organic feel. A global superstar, Smith comes off as utterly lovable. Sweet and earnest, he told stories about happy visits to Boston. (He spent a few weeks here after throat surgery in 2015.) He frequently celebrated his eight-piece band — four singers to create those choir effects and just four musicians — on his minimalist stage set.
Yes, his artistic range is limited, but range can be overrated. Smith reminds us that songcraft, soulful vocals and a joy for making art matter more.
California country singer Cam opened the night with a set that triangulated Shania Twain’s Nashville pop, Dolly Parton’s mighty twang and Mumford & Sons’ roots rock. In front of a hot quartet, Cam belted out her new single “Diane,” the 2015 breakout hit “Burning House” and a pitch-perfect rendition of Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams.”