To the haunting waft of taped pagan choirs, a figure hooded within a black plastic sowester beats thunder from a bass drum like the grim reaper at an S&M rave. Two songs in, she lifts her cowl to reveal blonde cornrows, now resembling a punter at an inclement Tulisa gig. Having played a White House Christmas party and the royal wedding, and shifted 3m copies of her 2010 debut Lights on the back of a kittenish voice, some airy electro-pop and buckets of facial glitter, Ellie Goulding is ditching her folktronic-princess-next-door image in time for her "heartbreak" second album, Halcyon, which dominates tonight's set. Kylie became SexKylie; Ellie's now ScaryEllie.
Unfortunately, the more dangerous she tries to get, the safer she becomes. The witchy choirs and orchestral throbs of My Blood and Explosions conjure visions of Florence and the Machine week on The X Factor. The fresh splashes of Balearic mania inspired by her new beau Skrillex merely bury an artist who sells herself on authenticity (she writes and co-produces her own songs) in mainstream electro-pop trickery; during Salt Skin she actually impersonates Auto-Tune. The space cadet fashions, meanwhile, fit her badly; it may be meant to be Gagaesque, but you can't imagine a woman with the voice and between-song demeanour of Stuart Little's girlfriend would ever let her backing band ride her like a motorbike. Even after she strips to a Rihanna-style brassiere during Starry Eyed, she returns to the pop-lighthouse-keeper for Dead in the Water, the moving real-life story of a man swept out to sea in front of his family. "It'd be inappropriate to do it standing in my bra," Goulding mutters modestly, the least popstar thing a popstar has ever said.
It's only when she finds an emotive soul edge on Joy, or unleashes by far her best song, the sizzling stomp of Anything Could Happen – complete with taped chorus hook – that the real, uncluttered Ellie shines through. For the rest, she's hooded in artifice.
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