Concert for the converted

Concert
James Blunt
Valletta Waterfront

Have you ever met anyone who admits to being a James Blunt fan? Probably not. Yet with record sales exceeding the 15 million mark, there have to be some folks among us who are willingly buying his albums. And not all of these can be apathetic teens buying last- minute birthday/Mother’s Day/Christmas presents (tick where applicable) for their mothers at discounted prices off Amazon.com either.

Most have learnt to keep their love of Blunt hushed for fear of being mocked and showered with ridicule. But there is comfort in numbers, and so with that in mind, James Blunt’s Maltese fan base and assorted tourists congregated last Thursday evening to witness the artiste who was once voted more annoying than traffic wardens and paper cuts, in the flesh.

Local soft-rock band Airport Impressions opened the show, warming the crowd up nicely with their now well familiar singles Walk With Me and Freedom, along with other material off their debut album Minutes of a Lifetime. A haunting bare-bones rendition of Borderline – solely featuring frontman Errol Sammut on acoustic guitar and vocals – got most present singing along, and continued to showcase why AI are being heralded by their fans as worthy contenders to the crown of veteran soft-rock balladeers Winter Moods.

Shortly after 9 p.m. James Blunt walked out on stage to the steady drumbeat and processed guitar riff intro of So Far Gone, waving and urging the crowd to clap along. The musicians sounded as polished as the studio recordings, while the vocals came across as being surprisingly more vigorous live. He followed in quick succession with three more songs, Dangerous, Billy, and Wisemen, answering the lyric “Where are you now?” in the latter with a jocose “We’re in Malta baby!”

“I was going to tell you to sit down and listen to two or three hours of miserable songs, but many of you seem to have forgotten your chairs,” the Cherub faced singer-songwriter jested, before promising he would liven things up towards the end. “But for now here is what I do best, miserable songs,” he added as an introduction to his weepy, woeful hit single Carry You Home.

Seven songs in and the audience erupted with the loudest cheer of the concert thus far. No, this was not because All The Lost Souls album track I’ll Take Everything is a surprise favourite among the Maltese public, but rather as a result of the camera crew finally managing to get the big screen projection working. Up until that point the larger part of the audience was graced with a glaring screen of blue.

Camera-related annoyances were to continue throughout the night. For the subsequent two songs the crew were still fiddling about with camera settings onscreen, and from then on the cameraman would every so often inexplicably lose his sense of direction altogether, suddenly focusing on the singer’s shoes or the ever so exciting empty right side of the stage.

While there admittedly was a sprinkling of fans engaged with every doleful note swirling out of the tepid sound system, most present were merely counting down the minutes until the next hit single out of the handful came along. On Goodbye My Lover, the Maltese were dubbed the most in tune crowd James Blunt had had the pleasure of hearing sing along to one of his songs. You’re Beautiful was met with a flurry of video phones in the air recording every precious second to share on Facebook later and force online friends into fits of shorthand envy. Yet these bouts of elation inadvertently highlighted the lulls of indifference in between.

Clearly Blunt is not the most rock ’n’ roll soul in the music industry. This did not stop him from an abysmal attempt at crowd surfing however. He returned with his band for encores of Stay The Night and 1973, which sounded genuinely fun and entertaining, and then with a somewhat intriguing “See you all soon” the night came to a close. While Blunt would not have converted many unbelievers with his performance, it was a treat that the faithful relished fully.