She galloped from end to end to address every angle of that theater, cued some blasts of smoke at climaxes of her heaviest electronic collaborations, and disappeared at the close of the show in clouds of confetti.
![ellie goulding tour raleigh ellie goulding tour raleigh](https://www.frontiertouring.com/web_images/1511/merchant_1511.jpg)
In a bigger crowd, we fans would have been stuck in a crowd of people who only know the songs they've played on the radio and refer to her as "E-lee Gewlding." As the great Cher Horowitz once said, "as if!"Įven on the smaller stage, though, Goulding treated the show as if she were in an arena. But I think I quite preferred it that way. But having such a large show compacted for a more intimate crowd was no problem the stage lost only its large Ellie-laden curtains and all but one LCD screen. In fact, for my date of the tour in Cleveland, the show was quietly downgraded from Cleveland State University's Wolstein Center to the open-air Jacobs Pavilion amphitheater a few months before the show. So with all of this success talk, was this a sold-out tour run? Not quite. That's what makes you guys awesome," she said before rolling into the song.) if I played it back home, nobody would know it. "You guys here in the States know a song - you know it quite well, actually - that. Though she never formally addressed it, she was clearly taken back by an entire crowd that knew every word to deep album cuts like "Codes" and "Aftertaste" in addition to the radio hits (including "Lights," of course, which has been transferred to an acoustic ballad style for this concert run. Maybe they have a point, but I'd argue it's because nothing about the Ellie we all have come to know and love has changed she has yet to comprehend the magnitude of her success. Some critics from big-name papers have slammed Goulding with not having the overbearing presence to command such an elaborate show. While her ultra-muscular back-up dancers bore the brunt of the choreographed workload, I'm glad to report that random spurs of energy (the bounces, the leaps, the twirls, the jumps - everything we're used to from her) are still in her wheelhouse they were the physical promises that she's still having a good time on stage, despite performing high-energy, upbeat songs inspired by Dougie Poynter, now her ex-boyfriend. But she's still Ellie, still playing some tunes and still having a good time doing so, this time in a bit of a varied format the show weaved between choreographed dance explosions, video interludes, and stripped-back acoustic bits. In natural arena show form, it ran on a strict blueprint and left little time for personable chit-chat, minus some small talk about the temperature when the good ol' Lake Erie breeze started to blow through the venue. She was just Ellie, playing some tunes and having a good time doing so. In live renditions of her older material that has been cut from this tour's set (probably in part from performer's fatigue, after she had been touring her first two albums' material for what seemed like an eternity), she seemed restrained - a bit timid, if you will - but never unhappy or ungrateful. She played theaters and festivals in one outfit, without dancers or any pop show production pizzazz. She's a changed woman from her earliest shows. It's a show fit for a true queen.Īnd in the middle of it all stands our musical shero, Ellie Goulding.
![ellie goulding tour raleigh ellie goulding tour raleigh](https://www.thebostoncalendar.com/system/events/photos/000/313/070/original/hs.jpg)
She has thrown out most of the old material in favor of the new, sprinkled in some choreography and costume changes, and plastered her backdrop with wall-to-wall LCD screens, utilized for flashy video interludes of Ellie looking more badass than ever before. With all of this in mind, it was only natural for Goulding to dream big for this tour - her first headlining arena tour in the States. Delirium found our Ellie, once just a girl with her acoustic guitar and a helping hand in production from Starsmith, clad in the shiniest Max Martin armor, geared up and ready to dominate. Her music, in turn, was tickled by the thought of it all.