Before Dido Armstrong begins her first UK tour in 15 years, an announcement appears on the gauzy floor-to-ceiling drapes that comprise her stage set: “No flash please.” It is presumably directed at amateur photographers in the sold-out crowd but could also describe the restraint that has characterised her career. A knack for turning featherlight songs into heavyweight sales has seen Dido shift over 40m albums without the need for any headline-grabbing reinventions.
For all the accusations of blandness, Dido’s ubiquity – No Angel remains the biggest-selling debut album by a female UK artist two decades after its original release – means her voice is distinctive, pure but plaintive in a way that adds a melancholy shade to even the most nominally uplifting song. As her five-piece band gradually crank up the sonic turmoil during opener Hurricanes, a new track full of vague but clearly emotional heavy weather, her crystalline tone slashes through the squall.
If she is nervous about being back on the road after such a long furlough, it is not apparent. Her between-song chat is relaxed and self-effacing. When a passing reference to her recent fifth album Still on My Mind triggers some isolated whoops, she takes it in her stride: “So three of you know that album, then?” The audience greet most of the new material warmly enough but save their loudest contributions for the early breakthrough hits, offering their own a capella chorus to Thank You, the song hijacked by Eminem for his stalker hit Stan.
Roughly two-thirds of the way through a mostly soothing but sometimes dangerously soporific 20-song set, Here With Me – a bittersweet mix of lyrical defiance and comedown breakbeats that is perhaps the quintessential Dido song – sparks a more prolonged outburst of cheers and applause than most acts get at the end of their gigs. Sometimes the unflashy approach pays off.
• At Olympia Theatre, Dublin, 27 May; Albert Hall, Manchester, 29 May; Roundhouse, London, 31 May. Then touring.
