I Love Lola Kirke

Well who wouldn't? It turns out her book flushed a couple of meh folk out of the woodwork.

I’m getting over-excited again. I’m spending Thanksgiving with Lola Kirke IRL. [Yeah so you just basically bought a ticket to her London show, right? Ed.] Her album, somewhat autobiographical most of the time, called Trailblazer, has been on constant loop in my house all year, since I heard her voice the first time, on Bury Me in NYC, a rare triumph for the algorithm. Anyone who could write a song like that was always going to be high on my list for 2025.

The Kirke sisters offer something for everyone. I bagged Lola immediately. My wife, Mrs Tennessee Vibes, headed for Emi and immediately began binging on Girls, Series 1, Episode 1, and watched them all within a week. This generation of Kirkes sit at the nexus of most of the culture that matters of the last fifty years, in both America and Britain, in music, writing, television and film. Lola interviewed Joan Didion without realising it and then allowed her sister to tape over the recording.

As I grew dizzy over tunes like Marlboro Lights and Madonna, after realising that, aged around 8 or something, Lola did in fact try to bribe the real Madonna with a packet of Marlboro Lights in London, the movie Sinners burst onto the scene. Who’s this Joan person? It looks a hella lot like Lola Kirke. Did this woman ever find time to sleep? No, it transpired. She’s a vampire.

And just as Tennessee Vibes moved to Substack, who did I find there but Lola Kirke herself? I am thrilled to report that Dolly Parton recently joined the party too. Substack is the new place to discover new and old music, and listen to some really great contemporary musicians like Margo Price, Bre Kennedy, Jane Ellen Bryant, Emma Swift, Valley James, Cyrena Wages and countless others talk about their music in fresh ways.

Lola has been shooting her new movie, Eleven Days, about America’s notorious 1974 prison siege, in Texas, with Rhea Seehorn. Just before she did so, she had Brooke Baldwin as a guest on her Substack Live. Brooke is an amazing news anchorwoman and journalist, and also happens to be attached to director Peter Landesman. It’s a happy family over there, telling one of the unhappiest chapters in the life of American organised crime. I cannot wait to watch although I’m more of a book guy and if you really cannot stand to wait, you can always read the book now.

I wrote previously that Lola is a quintuple threat, a true OG. She can talk to American and British audiences, and understand both sides of the Atlantic. Her social content is some of the most creative and original you will find anywhere. And in February 2026 she will be touring her book-plus-album one-woman show called simply TMI, Too Much Information. And, I am sick to learn, she will be appearing at an optician’s called Warby Parker [WTF? Fact-check this. Ed.] in NYC on February 27th with her sister Jemima. If that’s not worth a return plane ticket I don’t know what is.

I need to finish this soon as there’s another Lola Live coming up on this very platform with the delightful and original Anna Marie Tendler. But I am marking your card. I will be back on Black Friday with a review of Lola’s London show, with the witty and delightful Chloe Kimes in tow. So long!