Harry Styles and the Jules Buckley Orchestra at Meltdown – many strings to his bow

“Good evening, Wembley!” grins Harry Styles from atop a piano stool. An entire orchestra, his live band and some discreet camera-people are arrayed around him. “There will be no nipples tonight,” Styles continues, “unless Jules has one too many…”

Styles’s torso is, of course, one of the delights on show at his stadium tour, which is camped at Wembley for a record-breaking 12 nights. “Jules” is Jules Buckley, tonight’s conductor and tour string arranger, who worked on Styles’s most recent album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (KATTDO).

After a decade collaborating with Pete Tong on Ibiza Classics, Buckley is the helpmeet the BBC entrusts with Proms that build bridges between the classical and pop worlds. Most recently, he has recast the works of St Vincent and Florence + the Machine into Royal Albert Hall-worthy classical remixes.

On KATTDO, Buckley contributed to Coming Up Roses, an emotionally intelligent love song whose strings have been judiciously applied. This evening’s gig, though, is very much a co-production, in which Styles’s songs generously make way for a couple of Buckley’s own numbers. It’s perhaps not what the fans would have ordered, but a classy gesture, nonetheless.

As Styles notes, this gig is “a little bit different”. He’s right: you do struggle to think of another megastar of Styles’s wattage pausing their well-oiled world tour engine to graft an orchestra on to their touring band and play a different set list as a benefit gig for the Southbank Centre’s youth outreach work.

It speaks to Styles’s commitment to Meltdown festival, whose eclectic and tasteful bill he genuinely seems to have had some hand in co-curating. Tonight, Styles warmly recalls sets by Warpaint and Kamasi Washington, and how Buckley welcomed him into the “intimidating” classical space, even though Styles can’t read music.

This gig’s contents have been a closely-guarded secret. Might there be guests? Styles has a whole festival lineup he can summon. Might there be a curveball cover? In the run-up to KATTDO’s release, Styles spoke warmly of the album’s many influences, from LCD Soundsystem to Talking Heads, via the cult Manchester post-punk band the Durutti Column. (A Meltdown tribute to DC main man Vini Reilly is scheduled for the night after this gig.)

In the end, Styles’s soiree is wide-ranging, warm and witty; the track selections span his four solo albums, as well as two covers. But it feels ever so slightly vanilla. It’s not merely a lack of Watermelon Sugar or any of the huge hits from his catalogue. It’s always a delight to marvel at an orchestra’s many subtly interlocking parts, and it is an absolute gift to see Styles up close, both chatty and committed. But the musical offering reveals itself to be a little route-one.

The one-hour, fifteen-minute experience kicks off with Boyfriends, from Harry’s House, Styles’s gargantuan hit album of 2022. The backwards garble that opens the recorded version has become sibilant whispering. Icy strings hover, flutes opine, and the harpist plucks discreetly.

It turns out to be one of the more creative and apposite deployments of the orchestra. When Styles sings “he starts secretly drinking”, there’s a pained sigh from the brass section; muted, not ostentatious.

The rest unfolds as you would imagine it – with extended intros, thoughtful codas, and the pleasant overlaying of high culture signifiers on to Styles’s more winsome track selections. No fewer than 21 violins occupy a lot of airtime, dominating the arrangements.

KATTDO’s Paint By Numbers finds Styles singing from the piano, the song’s Beatles-like feel providing fertile ground for flutes and choristers. Coming Up Roses provides a similarly safe bet.

In a preamble, Styles recounts how he met Buckley to discuss the feeling he wanted in the strings – “inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, but never exhaling”. He recalls using a comparison to illustrate this mounting tension: middlebrow Canadian musician Patrick Watson’s Here Comes the River. “I said, ‘What do you think?’ And [Jules] said, ‘Yeah, I did those strings.’ So we were off to a good start!”

Styles performs Coming Up Roses and Here Comes the River faithfully, as the orchestra swells elegantly around him, and the sign language interpreter vibes gamely. It may seem churlish to demand more, but in this risk-averse set, the House Gospel Choir are underused, while multiple percussionists seem reined-in.

Styles’s music is not short on exuberance; moreover, KATTDO’s club lean seems like it might have appealed to Buckley, a rave-aware conductor. Fine Line, the title track of Styles’s 2019 album, gives a tantalising hint of what might have been: drum pads vying with timpani.

Styles, though, is never less than a genial host – and all in on the experience. Towards the end, he introduces Carla’s Song with a tale of playing Bridge Over Troubled Water to a friend who had not previously heard it. “It was like watching a magic trick,” he enthuses, of her conversion.

Presaged by a subtle electric piano line, Styles’s closing rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel track is a suitably impressive finale. He hits notes and holds them, as the whole ensemble finally kick into high gear. The ending is resonant. But given the talent on offer, this whole evening could have reverberated harder from the start.

Photograph by Julian Bajsel