Nadine Shah @ The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 22 Aug

A seated audience doesn’t stop Nadine Shah from harnessing her boundless capability and visceral talent at Edinurgh's Queen's Hall tonight. Her voice is incisive and glistening with clarity, as the vertically hung speakers, practically right in front of us, saturate the space – it plays more like a showcase than a run-of-the-mill gig. We are sat flush to the band set-up, the seating of The Queen’s Hall removing any gig argy-bargy, for the better or the worse. Her stage presence – a curious blend of Jack Sparrow-meets-Mick Jagger swagger and angularity, with the intense physicality of a boxer – is all-encompassing. She is jovial, pulling faces as she nails wild vocal licks to the wall; even playfully sticking her tongue out to a very young member of the audience in the front row. 

The lion's share of Shah’s setlist comes from this year’s excellent Filthy Underneath. Of these, Food for Fuel shines, Shah delivering not only the track’s main melody but also pulling overtime singing the Sufi Qawwali-style vocal interpolation from the recorded version. It's incredibly impressive, yet Shah needs only a breath at the song’s conclusion to correct herself. Similarly, Greatest Dancer sees Shah take on her relaxed choreography, the soaring chorus posing nary a challenge to her titanium pipes, each chest belt a rip cord yanked, and each landing perfected.

Though Shah claims to lack skill in audience interaction, she revels in the back-and-forth, playfully teasing a recently-married couple and shouting (in the affirmative) from the side of stage – without a microphone. In conversation with a man in the upper circle who proposed to her, she declines him because he doesn’t make "loads of money".

Image: Nadine Shah @ The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 22 Aug by Jess Shurte for Edinburgh International Festival

The tone shifts as the show draws to a close, with Shah using her platform to address the inhumanity occurring in Gaza. She airs frustration at the prospect of becoming desensitised to the images we see out of the region, yet she dares (and dares us) not to look away in ignorance. It prompts an ovation in the room as many get to their feet, Shah’s sincerity bubbling very much to the surface. This is never more so than during set closer Out the Way (from 2017’s Holiday Destination) – post-punk perfected with its thrashing, bifurcating guitar – as she opts to transition from crescendoing chorus repetitions into primal screams of ‘Ceasefire Now!’, running from stage and into the stalls. 

Shah’s professionalism doesn’t neuter the very visceral climate of her and her band’s set: it all feels and looks so easy while leaving the audience agog. It’s a balancing act that Shah takes in stride, and is really built to enrapture much bigger spaces.