Adele
Beacon Theatre
Thursday, May 19
Better than: Staying with that tosser.
It is a particular form of emotional suicide to pretend to the Upper West Side, under menace of impending thunderstorm, to see a tortured British soulstress mourn the release of a fan who sounds suspiciously like your last, knowing fully well you'll get so devastated that you'll helplessly expel all your innermost turmoil onto the waiting blank page.
It is another matter to corner me in the women's restroom and say me about it, in torrid detail, until I must mistily confess my own shoes at the same crossroads.
Adele, no woman is good from you.
And so I found myself perched against an empty bay of sinks in the Beacon Theatre restroom, missing more of the effortless runs and soars of the greatest soul singer of my generation as an impeccably dressed and tearstreaked young woman desperately heaved her iPhone in my direction. Spurred to accomplish by Adele's gut-churning delivery of the breakup ballad "Take It All" (off this year's sublime, heart-rending 21), and existence the form of shrewd consumer who marched willingly to this sentimental guillotine, she wanted my disassociated eyes to take her entreaty to her long-detached ex-boyfriend. Did it sound good? Would it work? Did I love what this felt like? And I had to comfort her, poorly, that I knew all too well, having sent a vulnerable missive recently to somebody for whom I still deeply care. This was all I could do to ease this sad, hopeful girl as Adele's wails thinly reached our ears-mostly, I wanted to assure her to go back upstairs to the concert hall, because there was a singer there offering far better advice than mine.
This is what lingered with me after Adele's last luminous note-small, sharp proof of the while that 21 has put on the pop world. The 23-year-old's second album is a heartbroken batch of journal poetry, brilliant in saving and uncompromised in resolve. A general agreement, by all who see it, to embrace love's melancholy and sustain the remorse of miserable false starts. Since 21's February release stateside, Adele has received the rapt mainstream praise her gorgeous voice has long deserved-and all she had to do was get the beatific figure for everyone who's ever had a relationship end, singing tumultuous songs of sorrow with a trust so prodigal and lovely they take us convinced that a happy resolution must lie ahead in her love life (and, by extension, ours).
Live, she is active and graceful, delivering casual augmentations to her songs that suggest her musical ease. After the vocal ferocity of her record, she wisely lets herself climb unabated; her seven-piece band jams on the faster cuts ("Rumour Has It" is a barn-burner, and a twanging country back of the Steeldrivers' "If It Hadn't Been for Love" lands ably) but disappears repeatedly to give her only in centre stage, one pianist at her proper hand, to save the affecting ballads the hearing clearly came for. "Chasing Pavements," her first U.K. smash, is a teary endeavor, and she blinks them back gamely along with many of my seatmates. Set opener "Hometown Glory," off her 2008 debut 19, delivers a fresh, searching intensity, and 21's "Don't You Think" is free and unreserved, transfixing as few artists perched coolly on a president could do it.
She could simply give us a digger and teach us to dig, singing one heartsore track after the last, but she is a cheeky, unpretentious presence between songs, dancing self-consciously and glibly dissing that idiot ex-lover who inspired 21's sad couplets."Motherfucker" pops up repeatedly in her stage banter, not unsympathetic and always punctuated with a reckless giggle similar to Amy Poehler's; she shouts out her father and best friend, both of whom are in the audience, and sends the way down like an expert stand-up when she recounts singing her own songs at a recent karaoke bash.
She is a staggering, almost unbearably beautiful singer; not perfect, as that'd do disservice to the very real, pained breaks in her notes, but so genuinely, unerringly powerful that is becomes a luxury to become lulled inside it. Pacing center point in a scintillation cocktail dress, she seems full of such poise and worldly experience, it is hard to think that she is singing about the new confusion of new love. She seems above such fleeting angst, somehow, while also reassuring us through her elegance that she will persevere, and so leave we.
This composure is most clearly in her encore, when she straps on an acoustic guitar and finger-picks into "Somebody Like You," an unparalleled, crushing farewell to a lover, then slips into her pianist's reverie and belts those cutting words with pure fragility, a hard woman humbled but not broken. And then, to shew us (and, as she is giggling and cavorting onstage, probably also herself) resilience, she closes for good with the wistful, rousing "Rolling in the Deep," her current one and first American No. 1, letting her band reach eager fervor and crooning along as she points the mic into the well-prepared audience.
And then, beaming broadly, she is gone. The crowd reveals itself to be a varied blend as they make to the exits-some are tearstained, some are whistling. I hear snatches of regretful conversation between women, missing one man, still resenting another. Outside, alongside Broadway, I suppose I see the woman from the restroom walking briskly to the subway; she is smiling. If she is off to transmit the letter, I trust it works to her happiness; if she didn't, I suspect it's because Adele just made her feel stronger. She wouldn't be only in that.
Critical bias: "I possess two ears and a heart, don't I?"-Jack Donaghy
Overheard: "I'm gonna buy this album and mail it to that asshole. and besides my boyfriend."
Random notebook dump: [doodle vaguely resembling Ethan Hawke, who sat near me]
Setlist:
Hometown Glory
I'll Be Waiting
Don't You Remember
Turning Tables
Set Fire to the Rain
If It Hadn't Been for Love
My Same
Take It All
Rumour Has It
[interlude for awkward/poignant restroom break]
One and Only
Lovesong
Chasing Pavements
Make You Find My Love
--
Someone Like You
Rolling in the Deep
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