Kate Nash + Bimini at The Roundhouse, London – live review and photo galleries

Kate Nash playing the Roundhouse as a sold-out headliner is, quietly, a big deal. Not in a grand, self-congratulatory way – just in the sense that she’s taken her time, done things her own way, and ended up here without smoothing off any of the edges that made people care in the first place. It felt like it meant something, but no one was forcing the point.

Bimini opened and immediately made it clear this wasn’t going to be a gentle start. Loud enough that my plus-one Doris and I had that familiar flash of regret about the earplugs we’d left in Hamburg. Bimini was great – really controlled, really confident, and really fun to watch. Big tracks, sharp delivery, dancing that managed to be both ridiculous and precise. The room was properly woken up.

Kate crept on stage with her band with a stage whisper –“do you think they’re ready?”– before everything opened out into a full band and string section, all in soft white. It could’ve tipped into something a bit music theatre, but didn’t. Kate’s outfit helped –dark fairycore whisps, but with red stockings cutting through it, just enough to keep it grounded.

The set itself did what her songs have always done: swung between two extremes and didn’t bother pretending otherwise. As Doris rightly pointed out, it’s either heartfelt love or it’s telling someone exactly where to go. The audience was there for both.

GERM was the standout. Clear, direct, and very now – laying out, in no uncertain terms, that feminism isn’t feminism if it excludes trans people. No softening it, no dressing it up. The room was with her.

Another highlight came in the form of what Kate said will be her next single – a cover of ‘Famine’ by Sinéad O’Connor. She spoke about reconnecting with her Irish heritage, which warmed my own semi-Irish heart, and then brought out a group of musicians on traditional instruments. It was a great rendition – respectful but purposeful. The song itself calls out the way the so-called “potato famine” is taught, reframing it as what it was: systemic oppression by the English rather than some unfortunate crop failure. By the end, everything dropped back to just bodhrán, harp, and voices, with Kate on tin whistle, and the whole thing shifted – suddenly it felt less like a London venue and more like a pub somewhere in Dublin. Sláinte. (And, actually, a reminder to me that we really should get a LOUD WOMEN Fest over to Ireland soon…)

The older songs still land exactly where you want them to, but that’s not an accident – it’s because Kate’s always written like she’s talking to you, not performing at you. That conversational, slightly rambling, very local (to me, at least) delivery – like your new best mate in a pub bathroom telling you exactly what she thinks of your terrible life choices – has always been the magic of it. “The hit”, ‘Foundations’ is basically built on that: witty, candid, a bit cutting, and painfully relatable. No wonder it stuck. Hearing it now, it’s impossible not to slot your own history into it – mine being that is was the soundtrack to an ill-fated 2007 situationship (G, if you’re out there, I hope you’re a better man these day). There’s a kind of colleagiency in it, everyone singing along like we’ve all made broadly the same mistakes. And then the ‘Dickhead’: simple, blunt, perfect. Deeply satisfying to shout, and now firmly lodged in my brain (which has already proven useful while driving around South-West London this morning).

What works is that none of it feels forced together. The newer material – with the strings, the more theatrical edge – sits comfortably alongside the older songs without trying to outdo them or apologise for being different. It all makes sense in the same space.

Kate’s just very good live. In control, not overworked, not trying to win anyone over. She doesn’t need to.

It wasn’t overhyped, it wasn’t trying to be life-changing.

It was just a really, really good night.