Charlotte Day Wilson is in a confessional mood. “I nearly didn’t make it out tonight,” the Toronto-born R&B singer-songwriter discloses. “But I knew once I did, the energy would uplift me and I would feel so much better. I do, and I’m so glad we did.” As is the crowd who journeyed to O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in west London on 31 October, for the European leg of her tour.
Almost everything about the 31-year-old Wilson is understated. She walks on to a minimalist stage in a modest T-shirt, denim jacket, black cargo trousers and loafers, surrounded only by her band and their instruments. She greets the crowd in a soft Canadian accent. Over the next 90 minutes, Wilson and her band perform songs from her recently released second album, the soul-laden Cyan Blue, and her sonically meticulous debut, Alpha (2021). Both records are honest and textured meditations on love, the kind of music that comes from a thorough excavation of the self. Her songs are lyrically raw, but melodically smooth: a soft rendering of love’s rough contours.
This cool style only makes her music more emotionally powerful, especially live: her lyrics – “She’s the kind of girl/To pick you up and bring you home/Fall into her arms/And feel the warmth you’ve never known” – hit like a tonne of feathers. And as she navigates from the gospel-infused “Mountains” to the restrained “Take Care”, it is clear that Wilson’s gift lies in how she tempers her voice. She effortlessly moves between a sounds, her set spanning songs such as “I Can Only Whisper” – infused with the instrumental hip-hop jazz of her collaborators BadBadNotGood – and “Canopy”, which could pass for a B-side Aaliyah track thanks to its syncopated guitar riff.
Then, as quietly as she emerged, she departs. She leaves a powerful ode to love – in all its beauty and horror – in her wake.
Charlotte Day Wilson
O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London W12
31 October 2024
[See also: Nick Cave’s Wild God tour: a sublime, transcendental experience]
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