Review: Paloma Faith at Bristol Beacon - singer stuns fans by jumping into the crowd

“I’m going to play you another miserable song,” chuckled Paloma Faith, half-way through the first part of this two-set show at Bristol Beacon.

Nobody could accuse the flamboyant singer of doing things by halves and this really was a performance of two very different parts.

Instead of a support act, Faith started the evening by performing her new album, The Glorification of Sadness, in a long blonde wig and black dress.

Her sixth studio album in a career spanning 16 years, it centres around the painful break-up from the father of her two children.

Three years after the split, emotions are still raw for the singer and she was clearly moved on deeply personal songs like Divorce and Already Broken, although she claimed a cold and sore throat was why she was sniffing (she was soon popping paracetamol and using a throat spray).

Despite the subject material, the new album has still produced some big singalong numbers and Faith told the seated audience to get to their feet for Enjoy Yourself and Cry on the Dance Floor.

But the biggest surprise for those in the stalls was during Sweatpants, when Faith suddenly jumped off the stage and walked across the rows of seats, helped by stunned fans as she sang and ran out of a side entrance.

After a 25-minute break, she returned for the second half with a different stage set, shorter brown hair, sunglasses and a leopard-print jumpsuit.

With the new material done and dusted, the next 45 minutes were back-to-back hits and crowd favourites and Faith seemed a transformed character as she belted through Stone Cold Sober, Picking Up The Pieces and Crybaby.

There was still plenty of humorous banter between the songs and Faith threw off her stilettos by the time of Lullaby and Changing, which resulted in mass singalongs and a sea of phone torches being waved around the auditorium.

By the time she performed Only Love Can Hurt Like This, everybody in the hall was dancing in their seats and it didn’t seem to matter that there was no encore. After all, they’d essentially had two gigs for the price of one.