Sabrina Carpenter review – pop’s next big thing is best when she lets loose

Framed by a huge heart-shaped mirror, as if she’s one of Greta Gerwig’s Barbies, Sabrina Carpenter steps into the spotlight. “Back then I didn’t know who I was, not even in the slightest,” she sighs dramatically. The American singer is reminiscing about her previous UK tour, and setting the scene for Sabrina 2.0, a pop star reborn.

Last year’s Emails I Can’t Send is her fifth album, but you wouldn’t know it from the setlist. After being cast in a Disney Channel series in 2013, Carpenter released four albums in five years. Tonight the 24-year-old plays 16 songs from Emails – her post-Disney debut – and scarcely touches her earlier material. Her new songs aren’t a wild departure in style – Carpenter’s pop remains an easy blend of R&B, acoustic and country – but you get the sense that she feels far greater ownership over them.

Fast Times, a stylish soft-rock track about running a relationship on fast-forward, is easily the highlight. Her four-piece touring band maximise its propulsive snare-drum snap, and as Carpenter spins under violet lights she lets out a shriek of joy that feels straight from the gut. Donning a feather-lined cowboy hat, she leans all the way into Dolly Parton kitsch on the stomping live version of Bad for Business (“He’s good for my heart, but he’s bad for business!”) and pulls it off, charmingly tongue-in-cheek. Paris, a rare older song, also sounds completely revitalised: Carpenter and band transform it from a bland single into something sultry, freeing and muscular.

But Carpenter’s whispered, careful ballads don’t yet meet her vision for them. Using Taylor Swift’s beloved All Too Well as a pre-show crowd-warmer is a bold gambit, and Carpenter’s similarly hyper-specific heartbreak songs are clunky in comparison: “You used a fork once / turns out forks are fucking everywhere.” After gossip around Carpenter’s love life threatened to eclipse her (it was dramatised in Olivia Rodrigo’s song Drivers License), it’s clear why Swift’s method of using intricate lyrics to reframe a media narrative would feel tempting. Yet it’s when Carpenter ditches her defence mechanisms and really lets loose that her fresh start feels most exciting.