Jens Lekman

EartH

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Something Borrowed, Something Bleak

It’s been more than two decades since Jens Lekman first drifted onto our radar — back when both he and we had hair, and the internet still felt like a series of whispered secrets rather than a shouting match. One of those secrets arrived in the form of a grainy clip: Lekman, unfussed, sardonic, wedged between the fuzz in the back of a police van. It was enough to hook you. It just took 22 years for the story to come full circle.

Fast forward to a brisk Saturday night at EartH — a venue that feels less like a gig space and more like an H.R. Giger-designed shuttle hangar dropped into Dalston — where those paths finally crossed. Cavernous, a little cold, faintly surreal: the perfect setting, as it turns out, for Lekman’s peculiar brand of emotional theatre.

This wasn’t a standard tour stop. The evening hinged on Songs for Other People’s Weddings, a collaborative project with author David Levithan, who appeared intermittently throughout like a narrator slipping between dimensions. Opening the set with spoken word — unconventional, a touch disarming — Levithan set the tone for a performance that refused to sit still.

Visually, it was somewhere between a wedding reception and a fever dream. The band looked like they’d raided a jumble sale en route: grooms, ushers, a rogue cowboy. No cohesion, yet entirely cohesive. Off to one side, a guitarist tuned up beside a conjoined mannequin, its arm threaded eerily through a jacket sleeve — the kind of detail you might miss if you blink, but once seen, impossible to forget.

Lekman himself eased things into motion with a series of cooing nonlexical vocals — delicate, precise, quietly magnetic. It’s always been his trick: drawing you in not with bombast, but with something subtler, stranger. His songs live in the in-between — the emotional grey areas most artists sidestep — and here, that sensibility felt magnified.

There was a tension running through the performance: the band, visually stiff and almost statuesque, while their sound moved with fluidity and warmth. Clarinet, saxophone and flute weaved through the arrangements — a reminder of how rarely these textures get their due in live indie shows. Meanwhile, lyrics danced between sincerity and mischief, casually dropping references as jarring as “the human centipede” into songs ostensibly about love and marriage.

And then there’s Lekman himself — the quiet one you don’t quite trust. The kind who, if a chair suddenly collapsed beneath you, might be found moments later with sawdust on his cuff and a hacksaw tucked out of sight. There’s a playfulness to him, but also a sense that he’s always one step ahead of the room.

Levithan would reappear at intervals, prompting the crowd — at one point urging everyone to shout where they’d come from. The response was chaotic, global, human. His musings veered philosophical: “last” as an adjective, “last” as a verb. In the context of weddings — and by extension, relationships — it lingered in the air. End, or endure?

Backlit, Lekman cast long, wavering shadows across the amphitheatre walls, his silhouette dancing high above the aisles as if the venue itself had become part of the performance. And vocally? Time has done nothing to dull him. If anything, his voice has deepened, gained a resonance that anchors even the lightest moments.

After a two-hour first half — yes, really — the shift was inevitable. Ceremony gave way to party. Jackets were slung over mic stands, drinks appeared in hands, the band loosened. Lekman announced it plainly: the wedding was over, now came the celebration.

What followed was a run through the back catalogue that felt both generous and inevitable. For the die-hards, it was the moment everything clicked into place. Songs that had lived in headphones for years finally breathed in the room — and didn’t disappoint.

By the time the encores roll around, the atmosphere has tipped fully into something communal. Lekman shares a story about a Japanese band covering one of his songs — he’d been enjoying it, blissfully unaware, until the slow realisation dawned that it was his own work being reflected back at him. There’s something quietly profound in that: the rare chance to experience your art without the weight of authorship.

It brings to mind Scott Walker, who once said he’d listen to an album exactly once after finishing it — loudly, intensely — because he knew he’d never return to it again. A kind of self-imposed distance between creator and creation. Back to Lekman, and you get the sense he’s lived in that same space for years, only now catching a glimpse of his music as the rest of us hear it.

We’re reminded, too, of a hazy encounter with Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan — somewhere between tequila shots and poor decisions — asking her what it felt like to create the very music she loved dancing to. The answer? Lost to the night, somewhere between the bar and The Dolphin. But the question lingers here, in this room, as Lekman stands centre stage, hearing his songs come back to him from a hundred different voices.

The night closed, fittingly, with ‘Black Cab’ — a request bellowed early and answered late. As Lekman softly strummed, the crowd took over, singing it back to him in full. A quiet, collective handover. Performer to audience. Creator to creation.

Multiple standing ovations followed, though leaving proved harder than applauding — bottlenecked exits forcing everyone to linger just a little longer. Not that anyone seemed to mind. The performance had already settled in, refusing to be shaken off too quickly.

Some gigs entertain. Others stick. This one — strange, funny, thoughtful, quietly subversive — did the latter.

Matthew C. Whitaker

The MOTH

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Biscuits, Banter and the Omnichord

A glitter-bombed stage and a curtain of gold tinsel greeted the audience at The MOTH last Saturday — the sort of shimmering, slightly tacky décor that feels half cabaret, half community hall disco. Front and centre sat Matthew C. Whitaker, looking like he’d wandered in from a sun-bleached coastline somewhere, with an open Hawaiian shirt and a mane of hair that had the air of seaweed dried in salty wind.

Whatever the room lacked in subtlety, the music quickly made up for it.

This was a seated show, which suited the mood. As the lights dimmed and the usual pre-gig chatter dissolved into a sea of polite shushing, Whitaker was already deep into a feverish strum — something that felt faintly indebted to the flamenco urgency of Spanish Caravan. His small-bodied acoustic guitar sat perched on his thigh like a prized catch, the amplified tone crisp and articulate.

The opening number, ‘You Can Only Let Us Down’, set a sombre tone. Whitaker himself acknowledged it moments later with a grin: “A bit of a downer, wasn’t it? Just had to get it off my chest.”

From there, the set loosened up. Violinist Alan Shunya joined him on stage, adding texture and variety to the follow-up material. Whitaker joked about “pitting up my songs with his bits and bobs,” but the pairing worked beautifully. Tracks from the upcoming album Songs for the Weary — including the jaunty ‘Chestnut Tree’ — brought a warmer, more playful energy. A smooth undercurrent of bass hummed beneath delicate strings, the whole thing vibrating with quiet confidence.

Whitaker’s stage presence is half the charm. Between songs he bantered freely with the crowd, interrogating a front-row punter about quitting cigarettes before abruptly deciding it was time to get on with the show. The audience lapped it up — heads nodding in rhythm, a steady ripple of laughter throughout the room.

Material from his first album, Feud, made an appearance too. Whitaker delivered a cheeky low-key brag about selling out the vinyl pressing (“all gone… three years ago”), before launching into a piece that sounded like revenge on horseback — galloping rhythms and inherited grudges wrapped in warm folk instrumentation.

A highlight came midway through the set with a sprawling mini-suite drawn from Songs for the Weary: a megamix-like overture that eventually flowed into ‘Mind How You Go’. The instrumental introduction stretched luxuriously, electric keys sliding in alongside a newly electrified bass. It built into a kind of sonic smorgasbord — part folk, part experimental gadgetry — even featuring a tiny theremin-like flourish. It was easily the most technically adventurous moment of the night, and the crowd responded with an enthusiastic (and slightly premature) “wooo” from somewhere behind the bar.

Whitaker acknowledged the interruption with a smirk. Apparently, it had never happened before.

Later came ‘Bones’, driven by sharp skeletal plucks that clattered through the mix while softer strums floated around them. The mood tipped toward the eerie — an intrepid little ghost story in musical form. Around this point, plates of biscuits mysteriously began circulating through the audience, passed along the rows like communion wafers for the mildly folk-curious.

Not everything landed equally. A couple of songs from the Henge project felt more like curiosities than centrepieces, and even Whitaker seemed slightly tentative performing them. Still, the occasional rhythmic wobble was handled with good-natured humour, and the audience remained firmly onside.

Before the end came perhaps the most unexpected moment of the night. As Whitaker introduced a Suzuki Omnichord, promising “sleazy jazz beats” if there were any children in the room, his bandmate quietly slipped off stage mid-show — apparently for a swift and entirely unannounced bathroom break. Whitaker carried on regardless, coaxing frantic foxtrot rhythms from the Omnichord at maximum speed while the temporary absence became part of the evening’s loose, slightly chaotic charm.

The encore — ‘Whisky Cats’ followed by ‘Valerian Tea’ — closed things on a slyly comedic note. The latter, in particular, had the unmistakable feel of a lost sitcom theme: the most Peep Show-adjacent tune you’re likely to hear outside the show itself.

Even if folk-leaning oddities like this aren’t normally your thing, Whitaker’s charisma and musicianship make it difficult not to get swept along. Beneath the jokes, biscuits and omnichords lies a genuinely talented songwriter — one capable of turning a glitter-drenched room into something quietly captivating for an evening.

The Paper Kites

The Roundhouse

By Captain Stavros

Softly Does It: The Paper Kites Cast a Spell Over Camden

On a rain-slicked February night in Camden, The Paper Kites didn’t just play The Roundhouse — they shrank it. February 24 saw the Australian outfit turn the cavernous former engine house into something unexpectedly close-quarters, the kind of gig where even the bar queues seemed to move in a hush.

From the smoky sway of ‘Morning Gum’, it was clear this wouldn’t be a bells-and-whistles affair. Frontman Sam Bentley’s voice — warm, frayed at the edges and completely unshowy — drifted over brushed drums and slow-burn guitars, while harmonies stacked up like dusk settling over the city. It’s a sound that doesn’t beg for attention; it earns it.

Touring behind their latest record, the band feel looser, deeper in the pocket. Earlier material once flickered with indie-folk fragility; now the newer cuts stretch and simmer. ‘Black & Thunder’ rolled in on a bluesy undercurrent, all tension and release, while ‘Without Your Love’ built patiently before blooming into a full-room singalong that caught even the balcony off guard.

What makes The Paper Kites compelling live isn’t volume — it’s control. They trust the space between notes. They’re happy to let a song hang for a second longer than expected. In a capital city hooked on sensory overload, that kind of restraint feels quietly defiant.

Between tracks, Bentley kept things easy, grinning about spotting the band’s name plastered across Camden earlier that day — still sounding faintly surprised by it all. That grounded energy bled into the performance itself: no grandstanding, no forced drama, just songs delivered with total conviction.

What makes The Paper Kites compelling live isn’t bombast — it’s patience. They let songs breathe. They let pauses linger. In a city addicted to noise, that restraint feels radical. Even Bentley’s easy charm between tracks — wide-eyed about seeing their name lit up on Camden streets — only deepened the sense that this was a band quietly astonished by their own journey.

By the time the encore closed, the Roundhouse felt lighter, like the room itself had exhaled. No fireworks. No gimmicks. Just songs, played beautifully, hanging in the air long after the lights came up.

By the encore, the Roundhouse felt stilled in the best way — not subdued, but settled. No gimmicks, no overkill. Just a band confident enough to let subtlety do the heavy lifting.

And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

From Water Slides to Stage Dives: Rockaway Beach, Bognor Regis 

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

A three-day buffet of brilliance, bafflement, and battered ear defenders

As the minions shuffled back to work, trudging through poor weather and poorer New Year’s resolutions, “New Year, New Me” was left starving back at the gaff, living off the good intentions of its hosts. Dry weather. Dry January. Dry skin. Dry water-cooler chat.

Yours truly, newly freed from the constraints of gainful employment, had other opportunities in store courtesy of life. Click-clacking along the tracks toward Bognor Regis, thinly veiled snow banks slid past the window. One couldn’t help but squint skyward at the boundless azure above, bathed in golden rays, and think: suckers.

If you too carried over some holidays, are free of financial burdens (kids, mortgages), or are simply gainfully unemployed — this could be you. We were en route to that strange kids-turned-adult theme park, Butlin's, for one of their signature Big Weekenders: Rockaway Beach. Once in its infancy, Rockaway is now a pre-teen in its 11th year. Three days. A buffet of legendary and emerging artists. Direct competition with the Butlins breakfast and dinner buffet. Only one would remain.

Day 1

The sun sinks, the moon rises — impossibly large, already asserting dominance. We drown our fish and chips in ladle after ladle of molten nacho cheese sauce, earning serious side-eye while giving the mushy peas a wide berth. A colonial culinary masterpiece, in our opinion. Fusion cuisine, eat your heart out — though it would likely be our hearts eaten from the inside out by cholesterol.

The calories were directly proportional to the amount of artists we needed to absorb: seven. Of those, three stood out.

Prima Queen

A two-piece with a travelling drummer, having a lot of fun when most of us are still hungover beneath a new moon in a new year. Louise and Kristin engage with each other more than the audience, which we appreciated — many of us were still reckoning with earlier food choices that felt sensible at the time.

They play and sing about what they know: their experiences. Tracks like ‘Ugly’ and ‘Chew My Cheeks’ explore unbalanced relationships across TFL routes and festival circuits alike — gig spaces and limelight blur together. Lyrically you’d expect morose Morrissey, but visually it’s back-to-back solos, skipping across the stage, and three tambourines (one per member). Kristin can’t wait to hit the water slide tomorrow; Louise later attempts to court a royal with her eyes over on the Skyline stage.

The speakers crackle throughout — more a sound engineer issue than theirs — but between that and the pop-leaning tones, they struggle to fully grab the room. They close with ‘The Prize’, a slick hook that pulls everyone back in. Heads bob. Clapping happens unprompted. Kristin introduces it:

“This one’s named after our friends — because sometimes the world makes us forget they’re the prize.”

True say. The next afternoon we spend hours in the water park and, to our regret, never cross paths with them to say we enjoyed the set — or challenge them to a slide race.

ElliS·D

After a few performances, we were flagging. The cold crept in. Darkness settled. Circadian rhythms lay in ruins. Enter ElliS·D — the shot in the arm we desperately needed.

Standing in for Stealing Sheep, this albino James Brown (energy-wise and touring-wise) blasted off, taking several layers of epidermis of those fans closest to the stage, with him.

“If anyone was expecting Stealing Sheep,” Ellis grins, “you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. This one’s called ‘Humdrum’.”

No one was disappointed.

Easily the best-sounding and most vital act of the day. Timing locked. Sound pristine. Fake-out endings worthy of Houdini himself. Everyone on stage firing. Ellis moves like Stretch Armstrong, invading every inch of the stage — and several beyond it.

Near the end, there’s an audible electrical explosion offstage. The equipment simply cannot handle the truth (said in Jack Nicholson). A guy behind us, as blown away as the AV rig, mutters reverently to no one in particular: “That’s really cool.” We clock it.

“This is our last song,” Ellis says. “If you want more… it’s really fucking long. It’s called ‘Drifting’.”

No joke. We’re repeatedly faked out and repeatedly scolded for premature clapping. One to watch. Playing the 100 Club at the end of January — we’ll be there, and you should too.

Mandrake Handshake

Promise from the off: a tambourine, a muahahahaaa, a warm-up stretch before the sprint. Eight multi-instrumentalists on stage, and genuine skill in how they avoid stepping on each other. Feels like art-school kids who started a band as a joke and accidentally got good. Loose, jammy, shameless fun. Like a psychedelic porno soundtrack.

And then… the vocals.

Non-lexical wails that work briefly — like catching a radio signal in a tunnel — but quickly wear thin. Between songs, the vocalist speaks perfectly clearly, which only deepens the confusion. The new material itself is excellent, but the vocals blow everything else out: flat, loud, wildly out of tune. As an older gentleman strolls past yawning wide while the guitarist rattles off a wookie call, the timing is impeccable, wish the same could be said of the set’s vocals.

We leave early.

Day 2

Pastels bleed through the curtains overlooking a car park. They’re peeled back to reveal a bright full moon — easily mistaken for the sun. Spellbinding. Confused, hungry, emaciated, we drift toward a gluttonous breakfast. Coffees. Waffles. Fortified, we waddle back to the hotel.

Halfway to our floor, the lift begins to shake violently. The hand of God slaps us. This is it, we think. Cut down in our prime in a Butlins lift. Our eyes land on a framed flyer: “Download our app, today!” Beneath it, simply: “Splash.”

Life’s too short. Let’s get wet.

We skip gigs for the first quarter of the day and head to the tallest structure on site: the water park. Child-free chaos under adult supervision. Zero queues. Slide races. Minor musculoskeletal damage. We quit while ahead (feet first, kids). Pints on the seafront. Salt mist in our nostrils. Sun still high. Darkness beckons.

First stop: Winter Garden.

Winter Garden

No skimping on guitar delay. Bass and drums crisp. Vocals? Less so. Harmonies fail to align. Most tracks follow a rinse-and-wash formula: build, crescendo, fade. Where do they sit? Gothic? Math-rock? Shoegaze? If The XX are for sad boys, Winter Garden might be for sad girls.

One redeeming feature: the guitarist appears to be listening to an entirely different band. High kicks. Gesticulations. Complete mismatch — and therefore, accidentally entertaining.

Directionless. Self-indulgent. Chef’s kiss for spectacle, not substance.

We Hate You, Please Die

Flagging before 9pm — dangerous territory. Then France launches an ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Music). Direct hit.

Guitars stab, stab, stab. Cymbals rain like hail on tin. Vocals stomp straight through ear protection. Scratchy. Punky. Perfect. France has given us wine, romance, and Descartes — but these three channel the spirit of farmers dumping shit on parliament. We’re all in.

Great hooks. Sharp turns. We promise to die if you’ll play at our wake.

Gans

A band that sounds as dirty as it… well, sounds. This filthy duo drags punters to the stage — the fullest Centre Stage’s been since WHYPD. Electro-pop trash bathed in strobes, shadows, and melting computer noise.

The problem? They abandon what they’re good at — the tunes — in favour of audience engagement that simply doesn’t land. Stage diving at an audience without the upper-body strength to support their ambition.

“Put your hands up like it’s 1999 Mother Fuckers!” they shout at a middle-aged crowd who don’t know who they are.

They sound like what Slaves became, or DFA 1979 held underwater too long at Splash. Washed out.

Walt Disco

Rolled in like the tide — smooth, quick, and left us a bit wet. From sweat, you perverts.

Buttery vocals. Symphonic. Nuanced operatics many attempted this weekend and failed (we’re looking at you, Mandrake Handshake). Think Hercules & Love Affair with an ’80s Bowie affectation. Polished. Rehearsed. Smooth as silk.

Online presence doesn’t quite match what we’re seeing — this feels more Radio 6 than a Channel 4’s production playlist — but it works. All new songs, no titles yet. Frontman James Potter abandons his guitar and prowls the stage with a roving mic. No one’s safe. Everyone looks delighted.

Keep an eye on Glasgow.

Insecure Men

The most outrageous act of the weekend — and recent memory.

Saul Adamczewski (Fat White Family) strolls onstage smoking a fag, giving fire safety and social contracts the finger. Bold. Insecure. Same thing.

They open a late starting set with ‘Cleaning Bricks’, a honky-tonk western oddity that hooks instantly. Seven musicians. Four keyboards. Someone yells, “Where’s the fourth bass player?” — we laugh and note down the anecdote, thanks for the insightful chuckle random dude. 

People flood the space mid-song. Hype spreads faster than Marky. Track two, ‘Cliff Has Left the Building’, slinks along beautifully. Slide guitar holding it together. The most replayable band all weekend. Music for any occasion.

“This one’s miserable,” Saul warns — but technical issues derail it, and instead we get ‘Crab’. Miserable enough. Lyrics like “Let’s make things harder” and “I want to peel off the back of your eye” delivered sickly sweet.

They finish abruptly 20 minutes early and simply… leave. The DJ panics, looks to the sound booth for an answer, and just flicks on the decks dropping The Runaways’ ‘Cherry Bomb’ on us. Landing bungled. Set? Superb.

Day 3

The Members

A try-too-hard mess riddled with tech issues. Feedback. Crackles. Unplugged guitars from stepped on cords, repeatedly. Out-of-sync chaos.

“What’s more punk than this?” Marky asks.

My gut screams no. We leave after two songs.

English Teacher

Studio 365 is cavernous. Gloomy, upbeat souls gather. The chatter dies instantly when English Teacher take the stage — the only time a class ever shuts up for a teacher.

Hooks collide from different seasons — winter meets summer — and somehow it works. No instrument oversteps. Everyone races together toward the finish line sticking out a different note to break the tape. New track ‘Shark’ meanders a bit, but the energy is undeniable.

This is music that would feel cramped and apologetic in a low-ceiling pub. Tonight, with space to breathe, it’s precision without waste. Effortless on the surface. Paddling furiously beneath.

They end debating whether sharks are fish or mammals — like a Reddit thread come to life.

And so it ends.

A seaside escape. Highs and lows like the tide. Rockaway Beach, 11 years deep, shows no signs of slowing. One final bottle of Prosecco at The Spoons as sunlight splashes and crawls across our faces, we sit comparing notes. Agreements, disagreements, what is prog-rock even and why does Marky actually hate it as much as he does? [I'm an old school punk, dude; hating prog is in our manifesto - Marky, Ed.] Zero conclusions made, zero water dispensed in the train’s lavatory after healthily lathering up our mitts in suds.

No arguments about how it felt, slippery and awkward, at times but, we’d do it all again. Well, not the part about the train’s toilet.