William Aston Hall, Wrexham
Sun 10 Apr
There’s no denying Lulu is fiery and she’s back and on point in this 2016 tour.
Darren Hodson, a singer/songwriter from the South of the UK set us up for the evening, a great soloist but also a versatile and fantastic guitar player, as we soon realised he was Lulu’s guitarist too.
Lulu’s performance started off with a bang, an in your face ‘I am ready to seriously own this stage’ with ‘Relight My Fire’, you couldn’t not be in awe with how petite she is but how big her stage presence was. To start off with such a big hit was a bold move, but one that worked. The sound and the lights ensured you were captivated from the start and it didn’t stop there. The first half was full with numbers you couldn’t help but move and be moved by, from her rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Man Who Sold the World’ to one of her new releases ‘Every Single Day’, which is taken off her new album ‘Making Life Rhyme’, released on the 13th of April this year.
The first half of her show ended with a stirring performance of the new single ‘Cry’, featuring the Military Wives Choir. In every tour date (thirty-five of them), Lulu decided to perform with a different choir at each concert and this would certainly be a challenging but fantastic experience for everyone involved. Laura Morgan from the Stafford Military Choir stated ‘It was so awesome! Lulu was wonderful and it was an honour to sing with her’. For people who are unfamiliar with The Military Wives Choir Foundation, it is a charity that brings women in the military community closer together through singing. The layers and harmonies were so in tune with one another and you could hear the passion behind Lulu’s vocals, ‘Cry’ was a great track to close the first half off.
It’s always hard to determine what an ‘Evening with’ show will actually entail, some artists talk about their life experiences more than perform their work, others do the contrary, but with Lulu, she did both. I was amazed by her stamina and the rapport she built with the audience. Lulu touched upon her life and shared moments with the crowd as if you were sitting to dinner with an old friend. We were lead into ‘Heaven Help’, with Lulu sharing with us that “Every night before I go to sleep, I used to pray for things I thought I needed in life, but now I pray with gratitude”. ‘Heaven Help’, another new track which had a great upbeat vibe with resemblance to The Supremes.
The show ended as it began, the majority of the audience were out of their seats, singing and dancing away to tracks such as ‘Shout’, ‘I Can’t Turn You Loose’ and ’25 Miles’. All in all I honestly say I wasn’t expecting to come away from that performance singing so many praises but for someone in her 60s Lulu is certainly a cracking performer who has some serious stamina and a stage presence that you can only fully appreciate live.
To check other live shows that William Aston Hall, Wrexham have coming up visit: www.glyndwr.ac.uk/events
words VIOLET YOUNG photo CERIDWEN HUGHES