Roundhouse, London
Dressed all in pleated black, with eyelashes the girth of caterpillars, the saviour of the music industry looks like a Victorian china doll tonight. Adele arrives onstage a couple of minutes after her disembodied voice. All fluttering hands and wittering humility, she takes her place primly next to the piano player for the remainder of "Hometown Glory", the capital ballad that ended her first album.
"You are the wonders of my world," she tells the phone-waving throng. It's hard to tell who swoons the hardest ? the assembled Londoners, reeling parochially tonight from the news about the News Of The World, or the high proportion of people here with American accents, who may or may not have something to do with Apple, the organisers of this month of free summer gigs.
The Americans are possibly more excited, only because tonight's intimate gig at London's Roundhouse marks Adele's return to work; she was forced to cancel her entire US tour after contracting laryngitis (those dates have been rescheduled). The trans-atlantic superstar doesn't "do" festivals, or arenas, thus limiting the number of people who will actually see the year's biggest-selling artist in the flesh. Delight levels are correspondingly high tonight, with frequent outbursts of applause from the crowd in mid-song. And if there are residual cracks in Adele's pipes, you can't hear them: the word "hometown" easily wraps itself around the venue's lofting ironwork.
Seven months into the year, it seems beyond doubt that Adele will finish 2011 as its biggest seller. More heartening, though, is the recent news that overall US album sales are growing again for the first time since 2004, thanks in no small part to the 2.5m copies sold of Adele's second album, 21. It's a small bump ? 3.6% up on last year ? but a salient one in a world where albums are increasingly viewed as vestigial forms, rent asunder by track-by-track downloading. In the UK, Adele's debut, 19, released two years ago, is now the second highest selling album of 2011. A few months back, Adele complained about her eye-watering tax bill in an interview; that particular intake of breath, you feel, is only going to get sharper next January.
Adele has sold albums to people who don't normally buy albums (or at least that's the theory); her music appeals to people who don't normally bother with music. The wide appeal of her vintage heartbreak has been the making of Adele, and, at times, her undoing, as tonight's set swings from brilliance to schmaltz and back again.
There is no faulting her stagecraft. At first, the set is bare save for Adele's mic stand, her bar stool and the stand that holds her mug of tea. But black drapes soon fall away to reveal a band and two backing singers, playing in a lounge filled with wonky lampshades. The china doll soon transforms into a kind of pub landlady, making homely conversation in the beige upholstery; you half expect her miniature dachshund, Louis Armstrong, to trot onstage and curl up at her feet. She would really love a glass of wine, Adele confides, slurping tea.
Every encounter with the Tottenham-born, Brit Schooled singer must make reference to her high-speed chatter; tonight's outpouring seems more nervous than usual. She is frequently on the verge of happy tears. The matey chat is of Adele's infamous exes, of watching Beyonc�'s performance at Glastonbury on TV and the pinch of her high heels.
As Adele visibly relaxes, she lets slip an expletive on the equivalent of live TV: this series of iTunes festival gigs are all being streamed online. She covers up with more chortling, and a series of covers. If Adele began her career as a pop-soul stylist, she has recently mined an affinity with another genre full of heartbreak: American country-pop. Her version of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me" is nicely understated, but "If It Hadn't Been for Love" ? originally by bluegrass outfit the Steeldrivers ? feels just slightly hokey.
Pace really suits her. The encore of "Rolling in the Deep" is exhilarating tonight; the ballads, though, can easily meander into grand anonymity. "Don't You Remember" executes this exasperating manoeuvre particularly acutely, between verse (gripping) and chorus (blowsy).
There is no arguing with "Someone Like You", however. Since performing it at the Brits in February, the night's triumphant closer has taken Adele from mere success to total ubiquity (and the kind of stratospheric tax bills the Beatles used to write songs about). Encouraging the audience to sing the chorus is a time-honoured trick. At the end, Adele scurries off, barefoot, before emotion can get the better of her.
Magdalena Wróbel Connie Nielsen Melissa George Cameron Richardson Chandra West
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