The combination of Anna B Savage, a London-born singer-songwriter renowned for her introspective and emotionally resonant music, alongside acclaimed poetic prose writer Max Porter, is both unexpected and yet, simultaneously, the most natural duet in the world. 

The main event of the night drew open as Savage finished playing a haunting rendition of Elliott Smith’s ‘Between the Bars’ and slipped into the acoustic strum that would become the emotional scaffolding of the evening. Her voice—at once velvet and mournfully elegiac—was the band, the rhythm section, and the atmosphere. With the mastery of a seasoned architect, she wielded a loop pedal to build and layer textures, creating an immersive sonic landscape. 

Soaring and cracking above Savage’s soundtrack trod the arresting honesty of Porter’s poetry. He began a live reading of his latest work: ‘All of this Unreal Time.’ A writer known for his lyrical prowess, Porter brought raw candour and piercing insight to the stage. 

His spoken words intertwined with Savage’s music, their voices bleeding into one another with a beautiful synchronicity. Her looping and layering became a counterpoint to his prose—a dialogue that felt both well rehearsed and yet never manufactured. At one point, Porter’s voice cracked with an apology: “I AM SO VERY SORRY.” The vulnerability was palpable, yet never mawkish. The performance was both an exploration and an exorcism of personal history. 

One of the standout moments came around at the final moments of the night when Savage’s performance of “Lighthouse Keepers” brought the room to a hushed reverence. The song felt universal in its sentiment. “I know that he is home,” she sang. “I know he’ll guide me home. He’s my lighthouse, he is home.” Her delivery was mournful yet tinged with hope, a counterpoint to Porter’s often raw and traumatic prose. Together, their interplay balanced the evening’s emotional weight, offering moments of light amidst the shadows.

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The sentiment was a benediction. It was an appropriate ending for a night steeped in the complex feelings Christmas evokes: the nostalgia for childhood, the yearning for home, the trauma that can linger in the season’s corners. Porter and Savage’s collaboration was, at its core, a reflection of those complexities—a mirror held up to the audience’s own tangled emotions.

The working relationship between the two was evidently profound. They weren’t just two friends on stage; they were co-conspirators in an artistic endeavour that blurred the lines between performance and catharsis. It was an evening that lingered, not just as a memory, but as a feeling.

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Ever since their joining back in 2019, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye – otherwise known as one of the most underrated and creative bands of the post-brexit-new-wave era Jockstrap – have continually pushed the boundaries of what it means to be in a band in today’s day and age. The amalgamation of Ellery’s classical training in vocals and violin, and Skye’s immensely idiosyncratic production style has allowed for some unique, and quite challenging electro-pop out today. While the 2-piece setup is nothing new, until now it seemed impossible to be in one without seeming like you’re just copying The White Stripes and just doing it worse (I’m looking at you Royal Blood). But Skye’s production and performance style almost seem more reminiscent of a band like The xx, which lends itself perfectly to the incredibly technical and clearly well-rehearsed style of Ellery. You can hear the musicianship particularly well in their most recent single. See the video for the most recent single ‘Glasgow’ below.

Tickets to the second UK tour have already gone on sale, but you can try and bag any remaining tickets here. The tour really ensures that Ellery is going to have a busy year, Black Country, New Road have also set themselves up for a massive EU/UK tour, the group’s first since the departure of lead vocalist Isaac Woods back in February. BC,NR started touring in May, and they had this to say, “We’re looking forward to sharing what we’ve been working on with you. The six of us will be performing a set of brand new music. We will not perform any music from ‘For the first time’ or ‘Ants From Up There’.”

Recently, it was discovered that I Love You Jennifer B almost didn’t make it to the public after the only copy of the album was stolen at a restaurant in London. Fortunately for us all, iconic London rapper Slowthai was there to chase after the thief and retrieve the stolen Laptop containing the album.

Jockstrap instore tour dates:

9/11/22 – Rough Trade East – London
11/11 – Rough Trade – Nottingham
12/11 – Banquet Records – Kingston
13/11 – Elsewhere – Margate

As mentioned before, the band’s Brixton Academy residency will take up 4 nights in September, you can search for any remaining tickets here. The new instore dates will come before these gigs; right around the album’s release. The first will be at Kingston’s famous Banquet at PRYZM on August 18^th (that’s right, before the album’s release), closely followed by a night in Brighton at Resident at Chalk on the 19^th (release day, very exciting), before finally concluding back in London at Rough Trade East on the 23^rd. Tickets for all 3 shows can be found here.

Al Doyle, one of the band’s many multi-instrumentalists, explained the album’s inspiration in a press release, “The idea of being out of control is always there in dance music, in a positive sense.” Frontman Alexis Taylor added, “By the time we were able to be back together, we were turning on a tap and having a lot of ideas being poured out quite quickly.” While everyone was commenting on the album, Joe Goddard, again a multi-instrumentalist, also decided to add, “We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways. There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”

 In my opinion, Hot Chip have earned their title as one of the UK’s arguably more underrated dance groups. They may not have reached the festival-bill topping heights of a group like Disclosure, but their energy and consistency always lend themselves well to touring and performing. So, in the words of Selector Dub Narcotic, “No matter what the dancefloor, Hot Chip has the answer.”