Gig review: Tom Grennan at First Direct Bank Arena, Leeds
Just 14 months after he last graced Leeds, the Bedford-born star returns with one of the biggest shows of his career as a post-millennial successor to Robbie Williams.
“This is one of my favourite venues,” Tom Grennan confesses early into his show at the First Direct Bank Arena. Pyro streamers and confetti cannons have already decorated the stage with ticker-tape; an unseen array of leaf blowers appear to be clearing the detritus from beneath his feet. The star grins.”Nothing beats a northern crowd, Leeds, and that’s a fact.”
It is only 14 months since the Bedford-born star last graced these city limits, a show where he found himself the accidental avatar of punch-drunk sport euphoria as an England side driven seemingly by astrological vibes stubbornly clawed their way to the last four of Euro 2024.
Artists of his calibre tend to leave longer siestas between regional visits, but the 30-year-old’s steady ascent through the upper echelons of the British pop class justifies the quick turnaround; back in the nation’s indoor enormo-domes, this run represents the biggest shows of his career thus far.
Besides, plenty has unfolded in the interim. Not only has he become a father to a baby daughter and celebrated his third straight album chart-topper – the verbosely baptised Everywhere I Went, Led Me to Where I Didn't Want to Be, peculiarly evocative of mid-noughties indie in its moniker – but Grennan has appears to have mastered his personal pain as fuel for his material – and with it, has perhaps fully embraced his destiny as the post-millennial successor to Robbie Williams.
Certainly, atop a three-tier soul revue stage, the kind that was once a fixture of variety clubs and late-night television, he works the length and breadth of its exposed wings and downward thrust with relentless energy.
Clad in a black quasi-chiffon jacket and hipster shades, he rolls through a busy twenty-song show with plenty of how-we-feeling brouhaha, ranging from the dap-horn retro swell of Attention and Diamond – new material with lineage readily apparent – through to the pink-hued retro-synthrock of Boys Don’t Cry and soaring torch anthem Let’s Go Home Together.
Throughout, Grennan works just about every inch of the venue, even venturing high up into the amphitheatre bowl for a spot of piano balladry. His sweat and toil is not in vain either; by an end where he unloads his slew of clubland-mix guest spots and a triumphant Little Bit of Love, only a few punters are left in their seats, arms aloft in the air.
“We’re going popstar!” he shouts. Truthfully, he is already there.