At the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday night, Gregory Porter put in a claim to be the least cynical singer alive. Though wariness and doomsday thinking aren’t unreasonable in these times, the jazz singer’s first gig of three at the legendary venue this week presented an artist and a person determined to see the bright side, and to bring it out in others as well.
This two-hour performance was a masterclass in good vibes. Porter came across as an immensely likeable character, standing to the side and nodding appreciatively like a proud uncle when his excellent saxophonist was ripping another solo or the Kingdom Orchestra behind him kicked into gear. This also softened people up to his lyrics, which can sometimes come off as overly simplistic and sappy, but have an ultimate goodness in them that it’s wiser to believe in than scoff at.
This sunny-side-up outlook shone through in every song he played, from the romantic If Love Is Overrated to Concorde, a beautifully melodic ode to home told through the story of a plane slowly landing after a tour. Even on Mr. Holland, the one song here born from strife not hope, he found a positive spin. Telling the story of being rejected by the father of a girl he had a crush on as a 15-year-old because of his race, he then juxtaposed it with the welcome he had from Jools Holland into his home years later, where Porter and the piano legend “ate some good food, listened to some blues records and fed the ducks”.
It was No Love Dying that was the show’s undoubted highlight, a raucous distillation of everything Porter tries to inspire. Its refrain, “The death of love is everywhere, but I won’t let it be / There will be no love dying here for me”, rang around the venue for what felt like forever, its simple but defiant meaning sinking in more with every next repetition until it became something of a mantra.
“I’m fully aware that this is one of the most fantastic cities in the world, and you could be anywhere tonight but you came here,” he told the crowd by way of thanks at the start of the show. People did come though – and will for the next two sold-out nights – because stories about simple pleasures such as these, delivered as sumptuously as they were by this modern day jazz star, are hard to find.
