“Glastonbury, do you like rock’n’roll?”, Lewis Capaldi asks the sprawling Other stage crowd at the start of his set, as if about to launch into a rollicking Great Balls of Fire. And then, with perfect comic timing: “Well, you have come to the wrong fucking set my friends. However, if you like questionably chubby young men from Scotland to sing sad songs, you’re in for a treat.”
And boy, are they sad. So universally so, that they start to bleed into one another like the ink on a tear-stained love letter. Beats from Carl Cox’s four-hour set in the Glade cut into Capaldi’s more spartan songs, like a mate telling him to cheer up. Had it been raining, as it so often does at Glastonbury, this could have been insufferably dreary. But Capaldi has such charisma, and such a beautifully burnished soul voice, that the majority of this set is engaging, and at times moving.
He begins with a flourish of the banter that so importantly offsets the sadness of his songs: the video screens play Noel Gallagher’s disparaging “who’s this Capaldi fella”?” interview, and Capaldi emerges dressed as Gallagher in a parka, swiftly removed to reveal a T-shirt with Gallagher’s face embedded in a heart. This breezy pisstaking is quickly directed towards himself. “I hope you don’t hate it” is how he introduces Hollywood; “Man with breasts plays Glastonbury” is another self-descriptor. Headspace is introduced thus: “This one is really fucking sad, and it’s six minutes long, so hold tight”. This schtick could tire quite quickly from here on out – he’s playing to thousands of people who love him and his album has been at No 1 for five of the last six weeks – but for now it’s a tonic between the devastating heartbreak of his piano-and-guitar ballads.
He could do with more songs like Hollywood, which has a George Ezra-ish bounce to it along with a touch of the Mumfords, and Grace, a slick and sturdy piece of soft-rock gospel (he sadly ducks out of trying to reach its arresting top note, though). Hopefully, come album two, he’ll let his songwriting elide with his more buoyant side – there could be such joy in seeing him be joyful. But when those power ballads have melodies as sturdy as Someone You Loved, they hit you right between the tear ducts.
On record, there are times he can tend to be mannered: letting his voice break to denote the most acute sadness, and doing some very strange bleating things with his vowels that go way beyond his broad Scottish accent. But live, these are bled out as he projects his voice towards the hills surrounding the Glastonbury site. There’s an almost doo-wop quality to the way he brings in his falsetto; when he deploys it on Forever, it is eerily like fellow bantering blubberer Adele.
After all the self-deprecation, his evident joy at seeing thousands of people sing Someone You Loved back at him has hopefully persuaded him that he really is adored. But he has a final quip to anyone who remains unconvinced: “If you haven’t enjoyed it, keep it to your fucking self.”
