What becomes a concert most? For those who ventured to the Union Chapel in the London district of Islington on March 4, 2026, to see singer-songwriter Lucy Rose, well, the memory has been preserved on two slabs of wax available through her website—her first release since becoming a fully independent artist—or all the usual streaming outlets. It’s a remarkably evocative set of 20 songs, hypnotic really, that bends deep into her past via “Shiver” but, as the inclusion of two new songs and several recent singles indicate, mostly presses forward. She’s backed by a seven-piece band that features the expected—guitar, bass, and drums—plus, surprising perhaps just me, violin, trumpet, flute and saxophone.
“Singer-songwriter” is something of a misnomer when describing the 30something Rose, of course. The label often conjures a folk-styled troubadour of the 1970s who mines treasures from an acoustic guitar or piano. She does that, true, but she also synthesizes an array of musical styles and influences into her contemplative brew, with dashes of smoky jazz, heady pop, and even ruminative psychedelia adding to the flavor. One hears a bit of Joni and Neil, in other words, but also echoes of Paul Weller, Clare Torry and—as my wife mentioned last night—even Laura Nyro. Stark numbers expand into rhythmic cacophony before free-falling into vocal bliss, all while a horn wails in the distance. It’s an intoxicating listen.
The set is primarily drawn from 2024’s This Ain’t the Way You Go Out and its predecessor, 2019’s No Words Left, with several non-album songs included along the way. As such, it plays less as a career retrospective and more an artistic statement, with the two new poetic tunes, “Am I Asking Too Much” and “I Got News for You,” furthering that assessment. These are songs that, as a rule, settle in the soul. They shimmer, glimmer, ruminate and reverberate in the best of ways—sometimes all at once. My LP is currently in transport between the U.K. and and the U.S., so I can’t identify the players beyond the jazz-inflected singer Eloise, who joins Lucy for a captivating rendition of “The Confines of This World,” but the band provides perfect accompaniment. The sound, too, is excellent throughout; listening to it via headphones leaves me feeling, when I close my eyes, like I’m sitting in the Chapel’s front pew.
Along the way, she discusses the health difficulties she faced following the birth of her son—eight broken vertebrae that were initially misdiagnosed—plus performing while heavily pregnant with her daughter at the appropriately named Roundhouse in 2024. She also recalls when she first played the Union Chapel as an opening act and how all the songs she sang were new to the audience, then shares a song that she only finished writing a week or so earlier, “Am I Asking Too Much.” A part of me does wish that the infectious “No Good at All” (from 2017’s Something’s Changing) had been a part of the set, as it’s my wife’s favorite song by her, but the inclusion of the one-off “Question It All,” which closes the show, makes up for it.
The set: “Sail Away,” “The Racket,” “Scared of Loving Wild Again,” “Pt. 2,” “Light as Grass,” “All That Fear,” “Am I Asking Too Much,” “Solo(w),” “Life’s Too Short,” “Pink,” “Shiver,” “Interlude I,” “Whatever You Want,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “Over When It’s Over,” “I Got News for You,” “Could You Help Me,” “The Confines of This World,” “Conversation,” and “Question It All.”
(The limited edition LP set, which is signed by Lucy, can be purchased via her website.)
The Old Grey Cat 