I saw four incredible pop shows this month. Two by Audrey Hobert (I interviewed her at her Berlin gig, which was so good I went again in Bristol en route to going home to Cornwall. I’m trademarking the Pop Pit Stop). She is so obviously our next superstar. Her writing is as crisply satisfying as the best of Taylor Swift, but a lot funnier, weirder and more self-aware than TAS in 2026; as magnetically dense as Whit Stillman’s dialogue, and a gauntlet thrown down in terms of actually being able to sing along to it – which all the German and Bristol girlies did perfectly, I was in awe. I realised after filing my piece that her album starts with a feint in I Like to Touch People: she knows she’s a charmer – she is, I loved her – but also maybe knows that the way into people’s hearts, to touch them as a newcomer, is as a sorta underdog, hence the overthinking and underconfident comediennes who populate the rest of her debut album. My guess is that album two will hide none of her power under a bushel. I hope it comes fast!
I loved seeing Lily Allen and Robyn, shows you could position as polar opposites. I don’t think anyone’s really captured the manicured dread of Lily’s performance well enough. The aesthetic, as my friend Anna pointed out at the start, looks like Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla: a pastel pink gilded prison. It’s delivered as one whole theatrical piece, Lily never breaking character, no “hello, Sheffield”, despite all the yells of “dump him!” from the rosé’d-up crowd. We too drank some lady petrol for the occasion, but both stood dumbstruck with horror at what was unfolding onstage, so dissonant against the big hen party energy in the room. I had wondered how Lily would live within this record live, and seeing it performed was just as painfully sad as I’d imagined, the story of West End Girl unfolding literally in a hotel room-styled set.
This next thing is probably thorny to write about, but: the show is very body body body. It’s only a few songs until she takes off her little jacket to reveal lingerie, which I think is how she more or less remains for the rest of the performance. Lily has talked about her issues with food, her post-divorce boob job, that she enquired about getting a facelift (I don’t know if she had one). At 40, she looks about 32, the apex of physical feminine perfection. The feeling the show left me with was: none of this will ever be enough.
The fourth wall always remained intact. She came out for a curtain call and was presented with flowers, more actor than pop star. The prison became protective. Might as well make yourself at home here if there’s no escape. Chilling, amazingly so.
By contrast, I couldn’t have felt more free than at Robyn’s album launch in London on Thursday. I thought we’d get an hour show, most of Sexistential, a few hits, and be extremely grateful for it. Instead she played for 1h40 with the most insane clubby breakdown of Between the Lines into Love Is Free, Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do, Sexistential and Life. I wasn’t drinking and can’t remember the last time I felt such an extreme sober high, the kind where the start of a beloved song makes you stretch every tendon in your hand in ecstasy, maybe at the impossibility of containing such a transcendent feeling. She did this electrocuted, bratty little strut in her leggings and stilettos during Cobrastyle that did something to me, this sort of next-level freedom that felt like another gauntlet thrown, to follow her there. Ms Carlsson if yr nasty, etc. When the song ended, she fanned her face with her hand in an extremely human way that made what she’d just done normal, tangible, within reach, not pop-star otherworldly. Get sweaty in the name of feeling like this: it’s worth it. I love how freely silly she is onstage: a little voguing, a little silly TikTok choreo, pacing around, always on the move, always moving forward. I pity anyone who watches her capering and thinks she’s cringe, or that it’s unbecoming for a woman of 46. Get a fucking life.
Honey caught me off guard and made me cry. It made me think about something she said to me about the song in 2019:
I felt naïve because I thought it was about self-discovery, but a friend said, “No, it’s about oral sex!” It could be about oral sex, sure! Intimacy, definitely, but it could be with yourself. It doesn’t have to do with another person. In a way I think your analysis is probably the best one, because isn’t oral sex self-discovery? Any experience you have that will give you a new point in your scale of emotions will make any other experience richer because you have a new point of reference.
I wasn’t going to buy a t-shirt (£40 for a square on a white top, criminal but there we go) but was so moved and … liberated??? by the whole night that I got the boobs one as a reminder to myself to remember how it all felt and to push past self-consciousness.
Other music
I love this record, feels of a piece with Melodrama or Night Time, My Time. Conspiratorial and too-much in a fun way.
Bill Orcutt and Mabe Fratti – El Incio es cuestión de suerte
I misread a line in a recent Blackbird Spyplane and momentarily thought that Sam Gendel and Kali Malone were collaborating and I’d somehow missed it. My disappointment was quickly dissolved when later that day Bill and Mabe, big favs, announced this beautiful full collab record.
Robyn – Sexistential
A LOT.
Also really into the new deBasement, Empress Of, Bruce Hornsby, Olof Dreijer tracks. Otherwise I’ve just been listening to the great Rewire festival playlist to work out who to go and see at the Dutch festival in a couple of weeks. Tips welcome, it’s going to be so hard to choose what to see at some points.
Btw you can follow me on Bandcamp here if you want, and I’m usually responsible for half the songs on our running Add to Playlist … playlist at work, which is pretty good if I do say so myself. Sorry for Spotify link but you can import it to the streamer of your choice.
Question for you
Have you ever rebooted your processes? I want to rework some of my approaches to work and am interested in any tools or exercises you might have used to get back to brass tacks and rebuild!
Representative image
Went home for a week, lucked out with stupid-beautiful SHORTS WEATHER every day we were off; swam in the sea five times; saw Tim Reaper play the Cornish Bank and enjoyed the clear crowd definition between student junglists and old heads (including one RDJ).
Work of note
Three of the four deadlines that were kicking my ass Feb - mid-March came out. Audrey Hobert Film & Music cover! Morgan Nagler interview! Talk Easy’s Sam Fragoso! Plus added Grace Ives album review and a fun little chat with CMAT and Jamie Oliver (my childhood crush) about her new video.
Misc
Finished my first ever Mad Men rewatch and in the mood to learn deeply about the death of the hippie dream. I can’t seem to find a comprehensive book on the end of the 60s – let me know if I’m missing something. I was going to start with Danny Goldberg’s In Search of the Lost Chord (and this PBS doc on Kent State). As a deeply institutionalised person in a lot of ways, I think it’s the utopianism and bravery to give everything up – no matter what we know now about how it all panned out – that’s struck something within me // My friend Ben asked me to write more about books here: I read more Laurie Colwin and a ton of appreciations on her from the last reissue of her work. I did not like Lost Lambs – I enjoyed the Online Girl Franzen vibe of the first 70 or so pages, but it quickly felt hollow to me and I don’t like detached, arch, hyperactive writing. So Mike Powell’s meditative New Paltz, New Paltz was the perfect balm to read afterwards. I think it’s best to pick up knowing nothing about it – all I knew was that I love Mike’s criticism and that the book was about a magazine fact checker in the 2000s. Enough for me, and I was richly rewarded //
Quilts made
Zero. Quilts plotted: one!
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