The sight of bored, watchful mums and dads trying to melt inconspicuously into the shadows, and tumbleweeds blowing where long bar queues usually form, say everything about the average age of Dorothy “Dodie” Clark’s fans. But the 23-year-old twee-folk ukulele botherer isn’t your average teen-pop sensation – she’s a superstar YouTuber with 2.7 million subscribers.
She opens with two of her newest and best numbers – the faintly Regina Spektor-esque Monster, a prickly break-up song set to a twitchy electronic beat, and Human, a hushed ballad sung as a duet with Tom Walker on record, containing lines such as “unzip your skin and let me have a see”. In all their preening self-absorption, social-media stars tend to make for problematic role models, but Clark uses her platform responsibly to promote positive messages about mental health and inclusivity. During the introduction to Rainbow, the stage lights glow in the colours of the LGBT pride flag.
And yet for one so hungry for attention online, she makes a surprisingly soft impact as a performer IRL, her slight voice often smothered by the crowd singing along to her every word. With morose ballads as a mainstay, such as Sick of Losing Soulmates and Burned Out, it’s difficult to imagine Clark bursting out of the YouTube bubble any time soon. If she does, she’ll need to develop a thicker skin – admitting to feeling “a little bit shit” because she got a three-star review isn’t a good look.
With still only a trio of EPs to her name, Clark has plenty of space to grow as an artist, and she seems to be heading in the right direction. Whether she develops fast enough to keep pace with the expanding tastes and horizons of her young audience as they hurtle towards adulthood remains to be seen.
• Touring the UK until 24 March.
