Metro, September 2022. M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool
The fascinating personal backdrop to this largely happy-go-lucky, amiable evening of supercharged, easygoing pop singalongs is that for all the world, George Ezra has been at pains to give the impression that he isn’t happy-go-lucky at all.
In his recent documentary End to End, the nicest twentysomething in pop revealed that touring leaves him emotionally and mentally drained. New album Gold Rush Kid certainly has its more introspective moments too, some quickly – almost apologetically – dealt with in Liverpool during a mid-set “mood-changer” where Ezra ran through the lovely unrequited/break-up love songs Sweetest Human Being Alive and In The Morning with just a piano and guitar.
Perhaps Ezra has worked out that nobody comes to his gigs for sadness; they want bikini bottoms, lager tops and Green, Green Grass. Still, the rapturous reception to the latter hit was proof that Ezra’s new songs have been as eagerly accepted into his contemporary pop canon as Shotgun and Budapest.
If on the records there’s a sense of George Ezra being precision-tooled for Radio 2 success, it’s a relief to find the likes of Anyone For You (Tiger Lily) fuller, brassier, and looser around the edges. Cassy O’ evoked some of the bar-room blues of Johnny Cash, while Blame It On Me’s metamorphosis from skiffle to samba and back again breathed new life into an otherwise innocuous pop song.
The fun ended, of course, with Shotgun. And if there’s already the sense that Ezra is doomed to spending his life trying to repeat its easy-going charm – Manila, for example, is a not too distant cousin – then there was tantalising evidence in the quieter moments here that he could more fully commit to more emotional, interesting material without scaring the kids (or the grandmas) off.
