Photo gallery: Garbage and Big Joanie at the Roundhouse, London

On a sweltering London night, Garbage filled the Roundhouse with a set spanning all three decades of their career, moving from new material on Let All That We Imagine Be The Light to huge songs including ‘Stupid Girl’, ‘Vow’, ‘Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)’, ‘Push It’ and ‘Only Happy When It Rains’. The night was fierce, emotional, funny and gloriously defiant, with the newer songs sounding completely at home beside the classics.

Shirley Manson is, quite simply, an all-time LOUD WOMEN hero and inspiration. Magnetic, outspoken, vulnerable, furious and very funny, she remains everything a rock frontperson should be. She spoke about ageing on her own terms, stood up for the LGBTQ+ community and somehow turned swallowing a fly mid-song into one of the evening’s funniest moments. Everyone we’ve ever heard speak about Shirley says the same thing: she is a very, very cool person. Seeing her still commanding stages like this after 30 years is both thrilling and deeply reassuring.

Opening the night were old LOUD WOMEN friends Big Joanie, whose journey we have absolutely loved following. We first interviewed them and booked them for a LOUD WOMEN show back in 2018, and in 2019 we watched them take to the enormous Brixton Academy stage supporting Bikini Kill. Since then, they’ve shared stages and tours with artists including Sleater-Kinney, Gossip, IDLES, St Vincent and Courtney Barnett, while remaining firmly rooted in the DIY punk community that made them.

It surely can’t be long before Big Joanie are headlining rooms like this themselves. The world has never needed Black feminist punk more, quite frankly.

We were delighted that our supersnapper Keira Anee was able to sneak in and capture these gorgeous photos from the night. Thanks, Keira!