The best upcoming gigs of 2018/2019
Our round-up of the best new London gigs to book this autumn and winter, from new faces to old-school favourites
Moses Sumney
Moses Sumney is your new favourite singer. No, really. With his saintly falsetto, Californian languor and scholarly bent, this former choir boy is utterly irresistible. His debut album, last year’s much-praised Aromanticism, is a genre-defiant meditation on loneliness in the age of the dating app. We hear touches of Thom Yorke, James Blake – even Nina Simone in its spacious tracks. It’ll be exquisite live. Don’t miss this: he’s going to be huge.
Read more ...Lykke Li
For ten years, over three albums, Swedish sad girl Lykke Li has been making scuffed-up pop with a dark, dark heart. With her fourth record, the archly-titled, so sad so sexy, we hear her flirt with R&B, trap and hip-hop. It could be her best yet: listen to Utopia with its deluxe anguish, or the genuinely addictive Deep End: ‘Indigo, deep blue, deep blue. Oh, baby I know where you've been…’
Read more ...Madeleine Peyroux
From hawking jazz standards on the streets of Paris to selling out concert halls, Madeleine Peyroux’s silken voice has a lot to answer for. She sings Billie Holiday’s blues, by way of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Serge Gainsbourg. It’s a satisfying blend. This November, Peyroux returns to the Royal Festival Hall with a new album and a full band. Expect late-night vibes.
Read more ...Abdullah Ibrahim
The world has changed since pianist Abdullah Ibrahim emerged in 1959 as part of the golden era of South African jazz. But the spiritual, meditative melodies of Duke Ellington’s protégé remain undimmed: at 83, this giant of jazz is as charismatic as ever he was. Born in one of South Africa’s toughest ghettoes, exiled during the apartheid years, Ibrahim’s reflective and progressive music became a force for peace. Don’t miss this rare chance to hear him in action.
Read more ...Charlotte Gainsbourg
Charlotte Gainsbourg’s music career began when she was 13 with Lemon Incest – a duet with her father in which she warbles and he croaks about how much they want to sleep with each other. Still bird-voiced, but long flown from that particular nest, the Anglo-French singer-songwriter makes stylish, detached music about love, loss and being shy. Her latest release, the electro-powered Rest, is undoubtedly her best.
Read more ...The War on Drugs
Can anyone resist Red Eyes? The War on Drugs’ 2014 anthem is a near perfect piece of Americana: a hazy tale of heroic melancholy on the open road. It breaks your heart and keeps the engine running. The Philadelphian band released their fourth album, A Deeper Understanding, last year, to great acclaim. Come and hear them fill the stadium with their particular brand of wide blue yonder, alongside very special guests Slowdive.
Read more ...Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon
American singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek wants to tell you about his day. In. The traffic on a way to a gig, his bowl of ramen, a phonecall with his mother. In a tumbledown conversational drawl, he lays out the minutiae of his life. ‘Bought a 350 dollar pair of lampshades, And we ate at Perry's and I ordered crab cakes/ Blue crab cakes/ Blue crab cakes /Blue crab cakes’. The effect of these lackadaisical meanderings is poignant and compulsive. Over eight albums, he has captured the variety and nuance of human life.
Read more ...Lily Allen
Lily Allen has had a hard time of late. Divorce, controversy, depression, paparazzi, a stalker – it’s been a rough couple of years. In her latest album, the deeply personal No Shame, Allen tackles her issues, one by one, with the same West-London-mucker delivery that made her famous. These Roundhouse gigs are the only London dates on her album tour. With one show already sold out, you’ll have to act fast to catch Allen’s bawdy humour and interminably catchy song-writing in action.
Read more ...Nile Rodgers and Chic
Dance Dance Dance. I Want Your Love. Good Times. Le Freak. Everybody Dance. Nile Rodgers is responsible for some of the most danceable songs ever written. And those are just the tracks he wrote for Chic. There’s the string of hits he produced for Sister Sledge: He’s The Greatest Dancer, Lost in Music, We Are Family. Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out. Madonna’s Like A Virgin. David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. There’s a reason they call him The Hitmaker. Chic will draw on all these hits and more at the O2 this December. Put on your dancing shoes.
Read more ...Anna Calvi
‘Don’t beat the girl out of my boy’, bellows Anna Calvi, in her trademark contralto. After a five year hiatus, it’s good to have south London’s very own rock goddess back. Calvi’s third album, Hunter, is full of the virtuosic riffs and operatic swells of her former releases. It’s a carnal record – alive with masculine and feminine forces. ‘I want to go beyond gender. I don’t want to have to choose between the male and female in me. I’m fighting against feeling an outsider and trying to find a place that feels like home,’ she wrote online recently. In Hunter, she may well have found it.
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