Everyone has to start somewhere. Before launching a solo pop career, Whitney Houston was a backing vocalist for Chaka Khan. Grammy-magnet John Legend played piano for Lauryn Hill and sang backup for Kanye West, who in more innocent times made beats for Jay-Z.
At the front of the stage tonight, powering up a song called Drive, newcomer Dornik Leigh is standing a few yards in front of the spot where his creation myth begins. A couple of years ago he was just a guy at the back: fellow south London soul sensation Jessie Ware’s live drummer.
Now Dornik greets his early adopters shyly, shuts his eyes, sighs and under-emotes in a warm falsetto, farming out the funk to contractors. There is a little electronic drum pad next to him for when one of his songs needs a little more oomph. Vertical lights flash in 80s pastel colours, dotted perilously around a crowded stage – there’s a drummer, a keyboard player, a keyboard-playing bassist, and an Afro’d funk guitarist with a heroic case of restraint. The band are an elegant mechanism, rehearsed to a T. No one really gets a solo: this is all about the atmosphere, not the musicians. One day Dornik will have flesh and blood backing vocalists, instead of canned ones.
Having started at the back, new artists all have to make it through a Tough Mudder race of comparisons. Dornik (his parents are called Dorothy and Nik) has been compared to Prince (because he has the funk, and the rock), Miguel (the 21st century loverman bent), the Weeknd (for the ticklish, late-night feel on songs like Second Thoughts and Michael Jackson (that falsetto). With Dornik’s vest, jeans, boots and doo-rag, the visual impact is more D’Angelo; his voice sometimes recalls a more introverted Stevie Wonder produced by Pharrell.
The independence with which Dornik has turned shy bedroom demos into an atmospheric album (just out) adds a little weight to the Prince comparison. He wrote and co-produced with no committees or featured guests. The 80s are a constant touchstone, never more so than on pre-album pop cut Rebound. The one comparison that clangs is that with the Weeknd. Abel Tesfaye has a sinister, depraved edge. You would think twice about leaving your drink out of your sight if he was nearby. On tonight’s evidence, Dornik has appetites aplenty but expresses them as yearning; if he bought you some unfamiliar cocktail, you’d drink it without a second thought.
Some of the exquisite detail of the album’s modernist retro production is lost in a live setting. There’s little space around the vocals, muffling Dornik’s melodies, and these were never rampant to begin with. Subtlety is always the first casualty of putting on a show, and tonight we miss the more recherché analogue burbles, and most of the words. It’s a shame because there is plenty going on in the interstices of Dornik’s songs.
A standout tonight, Something About You, was Dornik’s calling card back in 2013, when Jessie Ware informed her label, PMR, of her drummer’s songwriting hobby and they promptly signed him up. If you didn’t already know from repeat plays, all the sweet lovelorn nothings he utters – variations on “I’m just hoping you feel the way I do” – the song’s theme of tender hesitation might well be lost in a very pleasant haze.
On the poppier, funky tracks – like Stand in Your Line – the losses are more negligible. Here, the keyboard hook glistens, the chorus repeats, the bassline bobbles: the hand-holds are many. People dance. Somehow the track reached the ears of Questlove, who was moved to tweet dozens of exclamation marks and a link to Dornik’s Soundcloud. You imagine that the rat-a-tat of praise from funky drumming’s premier polymath could only be sweet music to Dornik’s ears.
Introversion has been a major theme in music since the advent of the xx. Acts like them – not least the Weeknd – have managed to fill large venues with minimal showboating. So Dornik’s compressed, saturated songs, whose melodies are insidious rather than in-your-face, have a ready audience.
As the gig unfurls, Dornik relaxes and remembers to include the little coughs, tiny exclamations and offhand chuckles that pepper his recorded delivery. His hands increasingly do more of the talking; the smiles are more forthcoming. Someday he might even break a sweat.
