Loreen, Glasgow review: 'like a clubland Kate Bush'

Loreen, Academy, Glasgow ★★★

The imperious Loreen is a huge pop star in her native Sweden and she's got the smoke machines, decorative talons and a big tilted ring stage set, like some portal to electro ecstasy, to show for it. She is also Eurovision Song Contest royalty as one of only two double winners (the other being Ireland's rather less flamboyant Johnny Logan.

This Swedish-Moroccan singer has fashioned a captivating stage presence which is part valkyrie vamp and part gothic siren, like a clubland Kate Bush. Her mighty pipes can just about be discerned through the throbbing backdrop of sleek but deadly dance tunes provided by live drummer and keyboard player.

Loreen | Kate Green/Getty Images

Moody electro pop opener Jupiter Drive established the intoxicating aesthetic before the bass was turned up to a quaking degree on the hypnotic yet hectic Gravity. Forever’s typical club tune platitudes (“you make me feel like forever”) were turbo-charged with bass drops, synth arpeggios and rock overdrive, klaxons heralded the pounding Statements and the bpm stayed high for pumping new song Coming Close, with Loreen surfing over the top.

The slow, celestial opening of I'm In It With You was an opportunity to hear a bit more of her soaring vocal before the bass kicked in, followed by the propulsive beat and quasi-baroque synthesizer patterns.

Surprisingly, there was little in the way of conventional Euro bangers. Warnings Signs was her one formulaic commercial gambit but even her Eurovision anthem Euphoria was teased out with a soft, ballad-like opening before the primed crowd took over on its uplifting singalong chorus.

Having roundly covered a number of electro styles in her main set, she encored with the nippy drum’n’bass beats of Is It Love before finishing on her lesser Eurovision winner, the blaring electro power ballad Tattoo.