As the crowd roars, and an eight-piece band gathers close, Jorja Smith appears cautious, maybe guarded. Even the singer’s opening gambit Try Me throws up a challenge: “I say your mind’s made up on me,” she sighs, her voice silky.
This is Smith’s first UK tour since 2018, when, at just 21, her raw, atmospheric debut album won Grammy and Mercury nominations, Brit awards and a host of celebrity fans. Glitzy features with Drake, Stormzy and Burna Boy followed, but otherwise Smith resisted the playbook for sudden fame. She left London for home town Walsall, spent five years on her follow-up album, 2023’s pointedly titled Falling or Flying, and only now, another two years later, is she touring those songs.
Her searing, smoky voice is used sparingly to start, sometimes even drowned out by the power of the band’s two drummers. But by Feelings, a duet with rapper J Hus whose verses are covered well by a backing singer, Smith drops the wall. She beams mega-watt charisma through the track’s lyrically chilly push-and-pull, and slinks between risers, glamorously at ease.
Falling or Flying expanded her sonic palette with serrated guitar, unusual textures, and a theatrical sense of scale. Tonight even her older tracks benefit from this new ambition. Backing singers bring lush, Solange-esque harmonies to a reimagined version of February 3rd, and there’s a rich, bassy funk to Where Did I Go? The double-drummers inject pure adrenaline into Go Go Go, a rock track with a new wave swing that seems to unlock something in Smith: the intensity suits her.
By now, those belting vocals are bringing the room closer, rather than holding the audience at a distance, and when Smith’s singers join her centre stage for a closing run through her poppier, non-album singles such as flirty Be Honest and straight-talking bassline hit Little Things, it feels like a house party instead of a point to prove. Shining and loose, Smith coos to the front rows. “I won’t leave it so long next time,” she promises, with the confidence of a star who knows she can have this whenever she chooses.
• Jorja Smith plays Manchester Apollo, 29 and 30 May, then touring.
