Tom Rosenthal - Live Review
Tom Rosenthal – St Pancras Church (London) live review.
On Wednesday Thursday and Friday in March 2019, Tom Rosenthal finally emerged from the internet and YouTube (where he’d built up a huge following all on his own without a manager or record label) to play proper gigs for the first time in his 8 year career. The fans weren’t sure they’d ever see Tom perform but the days had arrived as the first 450 tickets (150 a night) of a small European tour were snapped up in seconds.
Although the majority of the 100 songs Tom has released are fairly down-tempo often with sad music, he chose a setlist that had a perfect balance of beautiful songs that had the audiences sighing and crying with emotion, combined with uptempo, rousing songs with light spirit and wonderful humour.
Tom, on piano, was accompanied by John on acoustic guitar and backing vocals together with Maddie on cello and backing vocals. The blending of the instruments, voices and harmonies was perfect and mesmerizing. In a beautiful church in London all these elements combined created a magical 2 hour scene.
Opening with Don’t You Know How Busy And Important I Am, Tom set the stage for unique reinterpretations of his own songs, for this song and others, combining the quiet calming sounds of The Sleepy Album/Z-Sides with epic, loud climaxes.
The highlights for me were his prettiest songs: Go Solo, It’s OK, All Of Them Dreams, To You Alone, Middle Of My Mind and Soon Goodbye Now Love, where he sent the people in the room into a silent hypnotized trance where they recalled their lives and relationships over the past 8 years. The emotion packed into his songwriting is enchanting and fitted excellently with his unique, hushed, smooth vocals for these songs, which sounded great in a live setting.
For the “singalong sections” Tom gave specific requests for how the 150 people in the room should sing along to 7 or so of the songs. Of these, the surprise moment to remember of the night was an old B-side, Red. The only lyrics are “do do do do do do do do do RED RED RED RED RED RED do do do do” where Tom asked everyone to sing/shout along to the RED bit. It was totally silly and totally uplifting and really loud.
Tom’s main reason for not playing live for so long is due to him looking after his children, and the lyrics in the songs dedicated to them, Fenn and You Only Need You encapsulated what parenthood should be about in such a heartfelt way.
The worst and only bad thing about the night was that there was a Beyoncé cover in the set, but he even managed to make that funny and inventive.
Tom’s talking between songs was wonderfully charming with lots of moments of uniquely surreal humour. He introduced P.A.S.T.A as the only song of his that he really means and believes in. He described performing 2 songs as like going to the dentist. He timed his songs with the gaps between them synchronized with the church bells that struck on the hour that he loved talking about. He analyzed the quality of Jon’s throwing of socks into the audience (during Every Sock Gets A Hole). When he made the odd mistake in a song, the solution he offered would be to become more like a robot and not to get lost in the emotion.
Tom was so grateful and baffled to be performing to people who actually wanted to hear him sing. Despite 100s of millions of views and listens to his songs online, his modesty makes you wonder if he’s even noticed he’s got an adoring fan base.
As Tom left the stage, he struck some silly poses and then spent ages talking to his fans.
I believe Tom is the best songwriter of our generation and seeing and hearing these songs live in a beautiful church confirmed that for me. Let’s hope he continues playing his songs live around the world, whilst still remaining the 21stcentury’s best kept secret.