Critic's evaluation
The night was stuffy. Marking 26 °C, the city of São Paulo, as usual, was at full throttle in the late afternoon of Friday, 09/09, as a traditional warm up for the weekend. Near the Barra Funda subway station, the Fabrique Club opened its doors at 7pm for the entrance of the audience of Novo Amor, Welsh multi-instrumentalist. At the same time, not far from there, the Espaço Unimed, formerly Espaço das Américas, had a small number of people waiting for the Måneskin concert.
With the clocks striking 7:50 pm, Fabrique, with its maximum capacity of 1,200 people, was already visibly crowded. At this moment, the eyes of the people in the audience were crossing each other in full anxiety for the beginning of the show. Between neck stretching and nonchalant photos in an attempt to see something different on stage, the tension increased as the scheduled time for the show to start approached.
At exactly 8 pm, a red light goes on and a siren sounds. The venue lights go out, leaving only the outlines of the stage scenery glowing. Then one, two, three individuals appeared on the stage, taking up their positions. With excited shouts from an audience thirsty for entertainment, Ali John Meredith-Lacey finally enters the room and positions himself at the electric piano in the center of the stage.
Followed by the constant shouts from the audience and in between smiles showing that he is embarrassed by the audience's reaction, Lacey plays the first notes of Opaline and further fuels the crowd's excitement, ecstatic that the Novo Amor concert is finally starting.
Transforming the atmosphere into something romantic and serene thanks to the setting lighting assumed by the stage, Meredith-Lacey was accompanied by cell phone lights dappled on the audience, who were divided between photographs and desperate recordings as a way to register the moment. People's behavior followed until the duration of Utican, the next track.
Despite this, the show was marked by a mostly introspective behavior of the audience, which, apart from the beginning and the end of the tracks, assumed a posture of clear admiration not only for the figure of Meredith-Lacey, but for the melodies that were being played. With sparkles in their eyes, each person enjoyed the moment in their own way, whether dancing in tune with the songs, recording or photographing the performances, or simply flirting with the stage and feeling the experience.
Decimal, however, was the first song to be cheered by the audience in a different way even in relation to the openings Opaline and Utican. Between constant shouts coming from the audience, posters of admiration being held up in the hope of being read by the group members, and a crowd softly rocking back and forth, Mredith-Lacey stood in front of even the piano to perform the song.
With a five-piece line-up, divided between percussive elements, guitar, bass, and acoustic guitar, the Novo Amor concert had other chapters of interesting receptivity from the fans that went far beyond the performance of State Lines.
In Carry You, there was a good response, but Meredith-Lacey had problems with the feedback and the sound engineer ended up letting the instruments sound louder so that they became shrill and overlapped the vocal lines. Already Keep Me was the most silently admired by the fans, who were looking apologetic and coyly humming the lyrical phrases.
I Feel Better had a more explosive instrumental that, although still tame, was grander in harmony than the other songs presented so far. Repeat Until Death, in turn, was marked by a consistent chorus from the public and a very illuminated audience, thanks to the waves created by the cell phone lights that moved softly to the rhythm of the melody.
From Gold, one of the surprises in the set, ended the main sequence in a way that perhaps not even Meredith-Lacey imagined. With loud singing and clapping, the audience made the performance the most memorable moment of the show, which then went on to an encore.
From the joint album with Ed Tullett, who actively participated in the closing of the show, the encore was filled with Alps, another novelty in the set, and Terraform, the stamped finale of the Welshman's current tour. It was this way, shyly, as in the beginning of the show, that the Welsh singer and multi-instrumentalist Ali John Meredith-Lacey ended the São Paulo presentation of the Brazilian leg of the tour to promote Cannot Be, Whatsoever, the sixth release of Meredith-Lacey signed as Novo Amor.
Despite a britishly punctual start, the performance, on Meredith-Lacey's part, was devastatingly tepid. There wasn't much interaction with the fans, and the moments that did occur were quick and always marked by the frontman's shyness and his incessant admissions of "I don't understand Portuguese".
Another important and curious moment was when the singer positioned himself at the microphone and started a quick monologue: "why new love, why new love? Well, I think you'll never know" and then started a ballad called Anchor. Curious that the frontman questioned this, after all, the entire fan base present there knew well the reasons for adopting the name 'Novo Amor'.
Still, truth be told: Ali John Meredith-Lacey is of admirable vocal consistency and pitch. Always printing falsettoes on extremely high notes, he did not hesitate or falter at any time, and was divided between the electric piano and the guitar on several occasions.
Another truth is that, despite all the previous considerations, Novo Amor gave São Paulo a performance with 19 songs, one track more than usual, and designed the setlist with surprises such as From Gold and Alps, tracks that raised the audience's thirst even more.
One last, and important, truth is that the support band, not featured, was a more than important piece in regimenting the gears of the performance. Always sharp, grand, dramatic, and, above all, consistent, the instrumentation was of evident and contagious harmony that sent shivers down the spine of even the most unaware ears.
Even with the maturity and emotional synchronicity of the musicians, the show would not have happened as it did if it depended only on the frontman's performance and his scarce interaction with the audience. At this point, it is indisputable the fact that it was, in fact, the audience who made the show.
With faces of gratitude to be living the moment, each person present was responsible for getting singing, dancing, and clapping that were enough to show Meredith-Lacey and the band that the audience knew well its function as a piece of energy exchange. After all, from so many smiles, romantic glances, and visceral singing, the sextet could feel nothing but fullness.
In Novo Amor's second passage through Brazil, as far as the São Paulo performance is concerned, the frontman-musicians synchronicity was sharp. However, who really made the show was the audience, a heap of people who, at every moment, assumed looks of admiration mixed with their passionate muteness for Meredith-Lacey, the 'new love' of the almost 1,200 individuals who filled, on that muggy September night, the floor of the Fabrique Club.
