Amsterdam, one of the more low-key of Europe’s great cities, is an unlikely place to launch a tour as hotly anticipated as Harry Styles’ long-awaited “Together Together” global trek — especially when he’s only performing shows in one city per continent for this entire year. Walking around the city on this chilly May weekend, it was easy to see his contribution to the city’s tourist trade: One was as likely to hear British or American accented English as Dutch on the city’s streets, and when Styles asked the 60-something-capacity crowd at the Johan Cruijff Arena on Saturday night, “How many of you are not from Amsterdam?,” the roar was approximately three times as loud as when he’d asked the same of the locals moments earlier.
Which is not to say the audience wasn’t screaming for the entire show, because they were. As he must have expected, the response to his low-key latest album, “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.,” has been less fanatical than that of his previous ones — which, to be fair, is a very high bar. But the songs from the new album get much bigger in a live setting. In large part that’s down to his versatile band, which grows to some 18 musicians at certain points during the show. But of course, it’s mostly down to him.
