Review: Duffy at the Manchester Apollo

Dec 5 2008 by Laurie Stocks-Moore, Chester Chronicle

DUFFY/Manchester Apollo, November 30

REVIEW/by Laurie Stocks-Moore

TAKING to the stage for the second of a two night sold out run at the Manchester Apollo, Welsh songstress Duffy looked every bit the chart-topping starlet she has so rapidly become.

As 2008 draws to a close, Duffy must still be pinching herself at the speed of her success: her album Rockferry has sold four million worldwide and counting and the song that propelled her into the nation’s gaze, ‘Mercy’, is the year’s second biggest seller with 420,000 copies and downloads sold.

With only one full length release to her name, the album is performed almost in its entirety tonight, including the five singles it has spawned: Rockferry, Mercy, Warwick Avenue, Stepping Stone and Rain On Your Parade.

All are gratefully lapped up by a crowd of men, women and children of all ages.

The 24-year-old from Bangor, real name Aimee Anne Duffy, looked poised as she commanded the stage in trademark short dress.

Despite her rapid rise to fame, adulation and bigger and bigger venues, regular repartee with the crowd made for the sort of cosy atmosphere the singer must have enjoyed when doing turns in Alexander’s jazz bar in Chester. She even halted a song to challenge a playful heckler near the front and joked with him throughout.

The diminutive star’s voice deserves the meaty guitar parts and soaring string section places like the Apollo can accomodate and it works a treat, filling the auditorium with a heavy soul sound which Duffy’s powerful vocal chords still manage to rise above.

Duffy has gone on record saying she has struggled to adjust to her newfound fame - in September she claimed to be close to a nervous breakdown - but there was no sign of nerves tonight.

As she tore through the songs in her effortlessly Dusty-esque voice and sauntered about the stage swaying with unaffected charm, she has the crowd in the palm of her swirling hand.

Two new songs were aired, both in a similar vein to the material that has given her so much success

She ended her set with signature tune ‘Mercy’, arguably one of the catchiest, most memorable tracks of the year and until the X Factor finalists saccharine run-through of Mariah Carey’s ‘Hero’, its best selling song.

Returning for an encore, she began with a local-crowd-pleasing and competent rendition of ‘Wonderwall’ by Burnage’s finest.

Now nominated for three Grammies in the US, it seems Duffy’s star will continue to rise in 2009.