Soulful – that’s how you’d describe Craig David’s sell-out gig, although it was very much a night of two halves.
Dressed in a white tracksuit, regularly illuminated from below with striplights, and with a toothy smile that 90% of the time looked genuine, the singer was nothing but squeaky clean throughout.
But by half time, all his hits had been unleashed - from 7 Days to Fill Me In to What’s Your Flava?, and material from new album, Following My Intuition.
So what was left? A radio dial projected onto a vast screen signaled an acknowledgement of a debt Craig owes to the UK garage scene as Rewind began.
From a DJ booth in hilariously oversized headphones that he never actually seemed to use, he cued up segments of bangers from the mid-90s onwards to a crowd that grew increasingly vocal as the best bits of each track boomed out.
From a dazzling array of buttons and switches Craig could also produce any number of spaceship noises, gurgles, whizzes and pops, and what might sound (and actually even looked) a bit naff, actually made this occasionally soulless venue feel like something approaching a tiny club set on full blast for an hour.
Soul for the masses then – wasn’t that always exactly what David promised?
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