Gabrielle Aplin, live at The Academy

Gabrielle Aplin can’t go on. Struck down several hours ago with laryngitis, the chart-topping folkie has, in the face of doctor’s orders to the contrary, decided to press ahead. Twenty minutes in, she’s about to sing her number one cover of ‘The Power Of Love’, only, she can’t get the notes out. Fortunately, a friend has been dragged onstage to belt out the chorus whilst Aplin, seated at a keyboard, rasps her way through the verses. She’s apologetic and very sweet but, still, you fear the possibility of a car-crash.

In fact, this is as bleak as it gets. As she repeats over and over, Aplin can’t sing (she says she won’t be horrified if fans demand a refund). However, during the busier tunes, her band – a jaunty blur of beards and pork-pie hats – steps in and works hard at obscuring her sandpaper quaver. Just what the mostly teenage fanbase makes of it is difficult to judge. When Aplin thanks the room for being supportive, you wonder if she isn’t projecting a little because, in truth, the applause is muted.
Aplin is a quintessential YouTube star. Photogenic and, sans throat infection, blessed with a honeyed voice, she seems a natural fit for the charts. Actually, she’s a self-created performer whose first success was via home-recorded videos posted on the web. The first the wider world heard of her was when ‘The Power Of Love’ soundtracked a UK television campaign at Christmas. However, by then, her career was already in a dizzying orbit; most of those in attendance tonight, you suspect, were tweeting about her long before she troubled the mainstream.
She’s clearly a fighter, and just about gets over the line in the end. Having already dragged their mother onstage to sing her ‘happy birthday’, for the last song she’s joined by her boyfriend Alfie Hudson-Taylor and his brother Harry for a Mumford-esque folk wig-out.