Tuesday 20th May 2025

The Lodge, The Deaf Institute, Manchester, England

“Thank you for being here instead of going to see Bruce Springsteen,” Esther Rose says from the stage after finishing her song ‘Chet Baker’ about halfway through her set. While Esther plays in front of a group of about thirty people here at The Deaf Institute, across town the Boss is performing his third and final Manchester concert in a week in front of a crowd of more than twenty thousand.

For my part, I can only take a half-credit of Esther’s gratitude. I’d already seen Bruce live on Saturday for his second Manchester salvo, and had finished writing my review of the night in the hours before this next gig, hitting the ‘publish’ button just before I headed out to the Deaf Institute. From Born to Run to Safe to Run.

‘Chet Baker’ is one of only two songs from Esther’s Safe to Run album to be played tonight, but it’s a fitting one for the start of my review. A chance encounter with the song on an Instagram story a couple of years ago introduced me to Esther’s music and immediately had me hooked. After illness prevented me from seeing her live when she came to Manchester in September last year, I was determined tonight would be different, particularly as she is riding high from the release of her new album Want just a few weeks ago.

Perhaps because of that recent triumph, Esther Rose seems comfortable tonight in returning to her origins, opening her set with two songs from her debut album This Time Last Night, ‘Wanton Way of Loving’ and ‘Jump Down Baby’. Both songs show that the catchy melodies of Want are not new developments; Esther has had this gift for years. Perched atop her stool, smiling and singing happily, Esther attempts to ignite a singalong on her opening number. “Everybody!” she yells, somewhat ambitiously. “Somebody!” No takers. “Anybody!” she laughs.

The crowd laughs also; we recognise that we’re not quite doing our part. It’s not that the audience is bad, or unwelcoming. Perhaps there’s a culture clash, with Esther’s sunny and vibrant American presence outmatching her more inhibited – or repressed – British audience. Perhaps it’s the lights; certainly, Esther believes so, and she asks for the room’s lights to be lowered, improving the ambience and encouraging those who are shy to feel a little looser. Or perhaps the reason is just the small number of people in the crowd, each person expecting someone else will be the one to whoop or holler or dance; the musical equivalent of the bystander effect.

It’s a challenge also faced by Hannah Ashcroft, the opening act tonight. Stood solo behind an electric guitar, which gives her music a funky edge, Hannah meets a disparate audience of perhaps 17 or 18 people with a six-song sequence of bended guitar licks and hooks, starting and ending strongly with ‘Under the Static’ and ‘Amoeba’ respectively. Tuning her guitar in between songs, Hannah fills the silence by mentioning her friend bought her a capo because she takes too long to tune. “I lost it,” she says, “so here we are!” Her catchy pop-tinged music is a fine warm-up for Esther’s own brand – if I am allowed to appropriate her lyric from ‘Shadow’, they are from the “same book, different page”.

By the time Esther takes the stage, the number in the crowd has peaked at around thirty. Whatever the reason may be for our inhibition, Esther is undaunted, conveying a warm and gracious presence throughout and making this small gathering feel like the most important group in the world. Even when she asks a photographer to stop taking pictures – they’ve been using a mechanical shutter, and its percussive snapping has become distracting – there’s no thorn on this Rose. “There’s not gonna be much change up here,” she tells the budding paparazzo softly from behind her sunburst acoustic guitar, her platform-booted legs crossed in a pose she will maintain all night.

I don’t exempt myself from criticism here. I hang back in the crowd at every gig I attend, and I couldn’t be any more of a wallflower tonight if I was singing ‘Sixth Avenue Heartache’. But I’m keen and grateful to be here tonight, even if I don’t broadcast the fact. When Esther says, with a playfully exaggerated vulnerability, “crowd participation is optional – but I’m up here all alone,” I feel a bit guilty. When she says that if there’s any song we want her to sing, then shout it out, I am tempted to overcome my usual inhibitions and holler for ‘Handyman’. But I don’t. (And she sings it later anyway, towards the end of her set, so there’s no regrets.)

But what I do realise as Esther pursues her set is that artists don’t need encouragement in order to express themselves, even if they dearly value and are grateful for it. Every artist at some point commits to their art in the face of indifference, entropy and personal limitations – even Bruce Springsteen, who probably has twenty thousand people waving in sync to ‘Bobby Jean’ at this very moment. Roses need no hands to bloom; Esther Rose can blossom even if those of us in the room are faithless gardeners and do not always tend to her.

It means I can listen with a sort of reverence as Esther navigates her way through a fine set of songs, including eight from the glittering Want. She name-checks musical friends like Dean Johnson before singing ‘Scars’ and Bella White before ‘Chet Baker’ (“this song is about Bella, though when I wrote it I thought it was written for my younger self”). She hands out a postcard to be passed around the room, on which she drew a conceptual map of how some of her new songs link together. (Somebody must pocket it or post it to China, because it never reaches my side of the room. Later, I will buy one from the merchandise stand.)

Esther sings so crisply her high voice almost breaks on ‘Tailspin’ – “just love me”, she sings – and again on the titular ‘Want’, her “elder millennial anthem” which closes her set. This commitment deserves a reward, and by the end of the night she has received the singalong she has been seeking since her opening song, turning musical director to co-ordinate the audience in the singing of “got to let it go” on ‘Spider’. It’s endearing to see how much this small victory means to her in her smile.

“I don’t like those big shows,” Esther had said earlier tonight, after thanking us for being here with her instead of with Bruce Springsteen. “I’d much rather be here, listening to some unknown singer-songwriter.” It’s a sentiment she expands upon later, shortly before debuting a new song inspired by Joni Mitchell. She’s been reading the book Traveling by Ann Powers – it’s a biography of Joni – and her newly-penned song, delivered with Joni-like vocal patterns, feels hot out of the oven, with a line about her “travelling companion still at the wheel”.

In the book, Esther says, Joni was quoted as saying her ideal audience is 30 to 40 people. “This is someone who could be headlining with Bruce Springsteen,” Esther remarks with awe, and while she herself is competing with the Boss for Manchester’s attention tonight rather than sharing it, the implication is clear. Esther feels grateful for playing for her ideal audience. She loves to tour, she says, because living in the moment is what it’s all about. Her performance tonight shows that the philosophy of an artist, the perspective from which they approach their work, the gratitude they show for an opportunity to let even a few dozen hear it, are more profound signs of artistic success than any box-office head count. A life on the road can be a life lived well. In Manchester tonight there are two lights shining.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Want and written by Esther Rose, unless noted)

  1. Wanton Way of Loving (from This Time Last Night)
  2. Jump Down Baby (from This Time Last Night)
  3. Don’t Blame it on the Moon (from You Made it This Far)
  4. Tailspin (Esther Rose/Ross Farbe)
  5. Heather (from the Rough Trade Exclusive version of Want)
  6. Chet Baker (from Safe to Run)
  7. Ketamine
  8. Had To
  9. New Bad
  10. The Clown
  11. Joni* (unreleased)
  12. Handyman (from You Made it This Far)
  13. Spider (from Safe to Run)
  14. Scars
  15. Want

* track title unconfirmed

My other concert reviews can be found here.