Review: Lewis Capaldi's vulnerability makes him stand out

This year’s Glastonbury saw a triumphant return and his current tour - playing huge sold-out venues around the country - has been a reminder of just how much he is loved. On Saturday night a clearly up-for-it Glasgow audience cheered, stamped and sang along with every song in the first of two homecoming gigs. 

And Capaldi gave every indication that there was nowhere else he’d rather be. “Glasgow, it’s good to be home,” he told the assembled crowd. The whole evening offered evidence for that statement.

Opening with Survive, his comeback song released last June and one it’s hard not to read his recent history into  - “I've still got something to give/Though it hurts sometimes” - Capaldi seemed a man in control of himself and his voice.

That voice has always been his great gift; raspy, deep and sonorous. And more than a match for the open-hearted, self-lacerating lyrics he writes. On another new song, Something In the Heavens, he pleasingly pushed his vocals up the register at points; a reminder of his range.

Backed by a five-piece band who brought a punchy ballast to the sound, and with a stark but impressive stage set-up - using moving cameras to fill massive screens with shots of Capaldi, the band and the audience - this was a cleverly mounted stadium show that had clearly thought through how to present Capaldi’s minimalist performance style to a huge audience.

But then no one had come to see Capaldi do dance routines. They had come to sing along to his emotionally desperate ballads.

If there’s a criticism of Capaldi’s work it is that there is at times a sameness to it, both musically - which is why the almost yacht rock groove of Forget Me pleasingly stood out tonight - and in its sturm-und-drang interiority. 

But then that has also been a huge part of his appeal. The singer has always been the antithesis of the Glasgow hard man stereotype. He’s been remarkably open in person and in song about his heartaches and problems. 

In the Guardian in 2023 Alexis Petridis labelled him "the new Pope of Mope" (a title last assigned to Morrissey). It's an affectionate if cheeky title, yet listening this evening, it struck me that Capaldi could easily be positioned as a modern-day Johnnie Ray or Roy Orbison in his willingness to reveal his own vulnerability.

You got a sense of just how low he was two years ago on another new song - “the most personal song I’ve ever written,” he told us -  ominously entitled The Day That I Die. 

“I feel f****** great now and everything’s amazing,” he explained as a preface. But, he added, “this is a song about feeling s****." 

He then launched into one of his most naked lyrics (and that is saying something when it comes to Capaldi). 

It’s his saddest song, he suggested. When he performed it at Sheffield earlier in the month it had moved him to tears. 

There were none tonight. This evening Lewis Capaldi sounded like a man who had found himself again. Long may that continue to be the case.