LOS ANGELES - Earlier this year, Solange cancelled a planned performance at America’s Coachella music festival, citing “major production delays”.
Who knows what the show would have entailed - although many expected it to rival her sister Beyonce’s celebration of black culture at the previous year’s Coachella.
But, judging by the star’s transcendent headline set at London’s Lovebox Festival, elaborate staging would have been superfluous anyway.
Over 60 minutes of otherworldly, socially-conscious soul, Solange performed with a sense of freedom and joy that elevated both the material and the audience.
The star concentrated largely on her recent fourth album, When I Get Home - a series of fleeting sketches of her hometown, Houston, Texas.
It’s an abstract, complex record, with none of the instant hooks of its predecessor, 2016’s A Seat At The Table. But the audience, instead of being alienated, seemed enraptured by the snaking, jazz-like arrangements, and Solange’s sunlit harmonies.
Wisely, the singer peppered the set with more-recognisable songs from her back catalogue - the street funk of Losing You, and the soaring ballad Cranes In The Sky - and threaded the new record’s most memorable earworm, Things I Imagined, throughout the set as a musical motif. The band was crisp and clear, with a brass section that brought a fresh, New Orleans vibe to the material; highlighting Solange’s more political lyrics, without making them seem heavy-handed.