If there’s one word that springs to mind regarding Liang Lawrence’s show in King Tuts on September 30, it would be butter.
Stay with me here – it’s meant as the highest compliment. Golden lighting, silky smooth vocals and a face like butter wouldn’t melt combined to bake a cake of pure musical joy.
It was Lawrence’s first ever headline show in Glasgow. King Tuts can be an intimidating venue; it’s so intimate, and when you’re nervous and trying to win round a crowd that’s staring you right in the eyes it can be fairly daunting.
You could feel the nerves through the first few songs of the set. There were few stumbles here and there during Kiss My Apocalypse, Use Me and Stuck, but she found her feet fairly quickly.
Before long she had the crowd fully engaged, bantering back and forth, making self-deprecating jabs about not knowing how to talk to an audience that’s there just for her. It warmed the room up and helped create a more natural flow for the rest of the gig.
Lila, one of the tracks from her newest EP It’s a Funny Thing, piqued the interest of several casual listeners in King Tuts before bringing an early 2000s coming-of-age vibe with Backseat.
Things slowed down a little as Lawrence brought out more somber tracks. Armed with just a guitar and a spotlight, she commanded the room with the prowess of a veteran performer with Enigma.
Controversially, I generally dislike it when an artist performs a cover when they’ve got a big enough back catalogue to fill an hour-long set, but Lawrence’s rendition of Taste by Sabrina Carpenter was two minutes of just sheer joy. She really made the song her own whilst staying true to the original.
There are people who don’t like when an artist explains the meaning or the story behind certain songs, which is fair enough, but during a live show it really helps to inform a crowd’s behaviour. Introducing another new track, If It Isn’t Killing Me, Lawrence showed an incredible amount of both bravery and vulnerability.
The song is referential to the singer’s struggles with disordered eating, and telling the audience so beforehand was undoubtedly the right move. If It Isn’t Killing Me is a beautiful track in and of itself but the crowd was totally enraptured. It was as though there was a common understanding in the room not to make a peep and really drink in the music.
There was a subdued sense of awe in the room as played through the self-described “depressing” portion of the set. This quickly evaporated as soon as the opening note of Out Loud was played, with the energy in the room picking right back up for a fast and furious last quarter.
Closing with A Day Off In Margaritaville, her “Life is a Highway” as she called it, you could tell that no one either on the stage or on the floor wanted it to end. Guitarist Coby Tom was having the time of his life, throwing in a quick interpolation of the iconic Rascal Flatts solo as the song drew to a close.
It may be her first headline tour, but I doubt it will be her last. I’d love nothing more than to gatekeep Liang Lawrence, but she’s one of those artists that, if you were at King Tuts on September 30, you’ll be buzzing to say in a few years’ time that you saw her before she blew up.