Electric Picnic review: Sigrid – All music, no ego

SIGRID

Electric Arena
Less than two hours before taking total control of the Electric Arena stage, Sigrid played a surprise gig at the Other Voices Room. You couldn't get into it, let alone have space to move if you did. To play two such different venues such a short time apart, and each with such success, tells you something about a performer. Whatever ingenue status Sigrid had last December, when she played as part of the Other Voices festival in Dingle, the 21-year-old Norwegian – winner of the BBC's Sound of 2018 award – is now an artist fully equipped to deal with whatever stages might throw at her. She is probably the most simply dressed woman to perform all weekend – in nothing more than a T-shirt and jeans, like her band – and her music is similarly unadorned. Yet for all its uncomplicated nature that music is immensely special: its built-in durability is impossible to ignore. How wonderful it is to see a pop singer who is all about the emotional context of the music and nothing about the ego.