Audrey Hobert is serious about being silly at London's Kentish Town Forum

For all the diaristic yearning and pining the new pop crop do, Audrey Hobert dares to be something her peers don’t: daft. 

On her debut album, ‘Who’s The Clown’, she leans into humility, putting all her missteps on display. Insecurity and desperation aren’t off the cards, and neither is admitting you don’t really like the industry you’ve just got your foot in the door of. Listening to those twelve tracks feels like watching Bridget Jones mistime her exit via fire pole, or Carrie Bradshaw show up at Mr Big’s door for the umpteenth time, sometimes - particularly during this show - it seems like she’s not far off slipping on Georgia Nicholson’s olive costume. It’s cringe, but only because we’ve all felt it.

With that one album to her name (and a handful of credits on bestie Gracie Abrams’ massive record ‘The Secret of Us’, Audrey’s first crack at songwriting), she’s sold out two nights at London’s Kentish Town Forum. It feels like a disservice to say that that’s all she brings with her for these two nights, even if the show is wrapped up in 50 minutes. She begins the show on stilts, draped in a trench coat (with a train) and clutching a banjo for ‘I like to touch people’; from there, there seems to be a designated prop for every song. A beret is placed atop her head midway through ‘Wet Hair’, a mirrorball lights up for ‘Shooting star’, she bounces on a mini trampoline for the ‘Sue me’ intro. 

When she’s not doing one of her prop bits, Audrey switches between bounding across the stage freely and awkward, angular dance moves with refreshingly little concern for how she looks while performing them. At one point, at the end of ‘Thirst trap’, she’s even ambushed and tackled to the ground. But for all her over-exaggerated theatre kid antics, when the curtain is pulled back, we see that this is all quite vulnerable. There’s, of course, an element of this show that uses humour as a disguise, and when Audrey gets real, it’s particularly touching. When she interrupts ‘Wet Hair’ with a monologue about how her sudden stardom surprises her and reflects on feeling rejected by boys in school, it’s hard not to cheer for her winning now. Likewise, on ‘Phoebe’, she precedes the song by telling us how it took a long time to write because she wanted to get it just right; she did, as it makes for the most resonant moment of the evening.

Interestingly, being in her late 20s, Audrey is marginally older than her pop peers and her audience tonight, giving her the kind of big-sister quality usually reserved for veterans like Taylor Swift. The show is so well crafted and considered - right down to the double-play of debut single ‘Sue me’, once specifically with phones in pockets for maximum dancing - it’s easy to forget Audrey’s only on her first album. As relatability becomes an ever-more vital pop currency, Audrey Hobert shoots for it by allowing the ridiculousness to be as important as the authenticity. Every pop star wants to convince you they’re just like you, but when Audrey is up there playing the clown, she’s the most believable of them all.