Gabrielle Aplin performed at the Vanguard in Newtown tonight to a full crowd of supportive fans. Aplin performed songs from her debut album English Rain and coincidently it was raining. Her voice brightened the very damp, dull evening it was outside.

She thanked the audience for showing up, informing the crowd she wasn’t sure if anyone would show up. As she greeted everyone she informed her fans that she was suffering from jet lag and not feeling too well ‘rank,’ and asked the crowd to forgive her if she coughed at any point. On the contrary, she was brilliant. With a strong drink beside her she proceeded to belt out hit after hit. 

Aplin opened with Panic Chord, as people grabbed their cameras and took photos and videos. Interestingly enough for the rest of the set you hardly noticed cameras up throughout the audience. People were really responsive to her performance and majority of the time had the cameras away and mimed along. This crowd was definitely there to hear Gabrielle Aplin sing. 

We were kept engaged as an audience, especially when she spoke between each song, at one point she even spoke about her experience on the X-Factor last night and how she’s trying to get her friend Ronan 200 followers on twitter. She asked the audience to follow her friend so he’d be bombarded with twitter followers when he woke up as a birthday present. 

Aplin also alternated between guitar and piano, she performed How do you feel today? which she paused for a moment to contemplate the question, laughing considering how she felt. She also performed popular tracks Salvation, The Power of Love and Please Don’t Say You Love Me.

When it came time to play her final song she received a request to perform Home, to which she responded with a cheeky maybe as she re-tuned her guitar, also adding she would like to meet her fans afterwards. She smiled and answered the request closing the show with Home. Keeping her word, she stayed behind to meet and chat with fans.

It was a wonderful show and I couldn’t help but think wow, she wasn’t feeling too well and she still sounded superb.