Brandi Carlile may have rocketed into mainstream fame thanks to the recent album collaboration with Elton John, Who Believes in Angels?, but this US singer-songwriter has been revered by industry insiders and her devoted fans for years. The living embodiment of IYKYK, everyone from Joni Mitchell to Dolly Parton has clamoured to work with her, and she has quietly amassed a stack of Grammys for her potent blend of rock music, country and folk.
I found her through an Instagram video of a father and young son in the car, ecstatically singing along to Right On Time. However and wherever the Royal Albert Hall audience discovered her, there was palpable joy and reverence through a spine tingling two hour set that kicked off her UK and Europe tour. We thunderously roared our delight at anthem after anthem, but you could also hear a pin drop during quieter intimate moments. Constantly shaking her head in beaming disbelief, Carlisle shouted, “This audience is a dream!”
It opens with fan favourite backing duo Sister Strings rocking white and purple dreadlocks along with their signature cello and violin, before Carlile walks on to absolute hysteria. Never one to follow convention, she starts with the plaintive Stay Gentle with its heartfelt refrain that it’s “the most powerful thing you can do.”
As always, she is backed by the Hanseroth twins, Phil and Tim, who have been with her for 25 years, creating flawless guitar and vocal harmonies and contributing to some of her greatest hits. She calls them, “My angels,” and the entire band is “my family.”
Then all three sling on electric guitars and we’re off. The constant musical highs are matched by Carlile’s own endless and boundless excitement at fulfilling a lifelong dream. “I’m feeling a crazy mix of accomplishment gratitude and disbelief that I’m here,” she yells. “I’ve wanted to stand on this stage since I was 12.”
She has the entire audience on their feet and chanting along to Hold Out Your Hand. The first big power anthem is The Story and the place goes nuts as that unique, beautiful quavering vibrato soars and the massed electric guitars thunder. She will repeat that trademark mix of soft opening on piano or acoustic guitar before revving up the rock to eleven. It floors me every time, from Right on Time to the glorious The Story. And yes, I cried.
Carlile’s great gift is that each song is both searingly personal and universal, from her soul to ours. She speaks movingly of her wife and daughters before segueing into a beautiful medley of Me Without You and The Mother. But she can also work magic on other artists’ material, telling us reverently of working with Joni Mitchell before a tender reworked version of the legend’s A Case of You.
She also repeatedly expresses her awe at working with Elton John, her hero since she was 11, who is there in a balcony box. She credits him with teaching her “I need to get off my ass and see the world” before adding, “Playing music in front of you is another level of mind f**k!”
Despite our hopes he might join her on stage, she instead pops up in his box, delivering an a cappella version of Beginning To Feel The Years with the twins. Sister Strings lay down a staggering mix of classical, funk and soul before Carlile reappears on stage for the final number, the bruisingly melancholy Party Of One.
It may feel like she speaks personally to each of us, to our individual party of one, but by the end we are united six thousand-strong by her searing hope and sense of humanity. What a night!