Last Thursday,  I headed down to Santos Party House to catch Ellie Goulding where she celebrated the release of her flawless new album “Halcyon” which was released just two days prior to the gig.  I’ve been playing the album constantly and it was amazing to see it brought to life in the flesh.

Shortly after 8.45 pm, she arrived on stage to the deafening screams of the crowd and launched into a passionate  performance of “Don’t Say A Word” and then came my personal favorite “My Blood”, which she told us is also her favorite from the new album.  More new stuff followed and it quickly became clear that the newness of the album didn’t matter one bit, people had clearly got it in advance and were enthusiastically signing along to every song, causing her to remark how cool it was to perform in such an intimate venue (Santos only holds about 600) and see people singing the words to her new stuff.

The last time I saw Ellie love was back in 2010 while relatively few people knew about her here in the US. I remember her remarking at the time how she wasn’t quite sure how everyone knew about her while thanking us for coming to the show. All that’s changed now with the well deserved success of  ”Lights” and the devoted following she’s since amassed. Refreshingly, she’s still the same sweet girl who chats to the audience in breaks, cracks jokes, and genuinely seems delighted that she gets to perform in NYC, but watching her perform I detected a touch more confidence that surely comes with gaining success in the U.S.

During the dance numbers she confidently writhed around the stage causing guys to scream “Ellie you’re hot!”  and whipping the crowd into a frenzy. The acoustic numbers were met with just as much enthusiasm and seeing how comfortably she moves between the genres really reminded me what a talent she is.

I’ll have a review of “Halcyon” to share with you shortly, in the meantime enjoy some video from Santos!