Kirke & Kimes in London

My last show of 2025 had been in the diary since May 16. It was even better than I hoped. Lola Kirke supported by Chloe Kimes at Oslo Hackney.

Nov 28, 2025

I thought I had seen and written it all before. I’d read the book, played Trailblazer to destruction, including the deluxe edition. My wife had made me watch a bit of Girls. I had re-listened to All Right Now. I was at Sinners in an actual cinema and watched it twice. I had become determined to out-research myself. I have seen 100% of the Substack Lives and discovered that Lola is someone who crosses generations and universes, being friendly with Rosanna Arquette and Rosanne Cash but also Anna Marie Tendler. And yet, I was not the biggest fan last night. That award went to a man with every album on vinyl, the book, and (if I’m not mistaken) a home-made tribute T-shirt. Props!

Things kicked off with fully six new songs from Trailblazer. Raised by Wolves is a great choice for air-guitaring your way through cooking dinner. Hey Neighbo(u)r got a very strong reception, being catchy and funny. Lola introduced it as a study in culture clashes: her NYC via LA background arriving in Nashville. It’s a feeling she experiences throughout her life, as a girl finding her way in America but born in London to British parents. She summarises herself thus: half Jewish, sorta queer. But oh so much more than that.

Catchy and funny isn’t a bad way to describe Lola Kirke. She acts, sings and writes very well indeed. A triple threat who is also hilarious. She loves making people feel relaxed and at ease, and never takes herself too seriously. This is the only show I’ve ever been to where the artist reads from their own book between songs, and everyone loved it. Some moments were priceless, such as the one about Lola and sisters dressed in purple bridesmaid dresses at a wedding, with eyes and faces just as purple from a full-on brawl the previous evening.

The set then moved into Lola’s country period, a time before I knew her, the place where she started. But there were some new interpretations there too, not least on Monster, a song I always associated with Frankenstein but now makes me think of her role in Sinners, surely the movie of the year.

Trailblazer is also bound to be up for awards. LK has really found her groove with this album. It feels as though writing the book (not a memoir) has helped resolve certain elements of her life, and given her the confidence to just be. She’s in another brilliant movie next year, a completely different film about a notorious prison siege called Eleven Days with Rhea Seehorn. The future is even brighter than the present.

LK worked hard last night: around twenty songs, Trailblazer in full, and a little foray into Wild Mountain Thyme from the Sinners soundtrack. It was warm and sticky, and became even more sticky when she ‘persuaded’ all of us to do some line dancing. This was not something I had thought to warn my brother about, my sidekick for the evening, and there was a second where I wanted to watch from the side. No, I thought, you are getting a free dance lesson from Lola and Chloe. Get on with it. Minutes later, we were standing on toes, clapping at the wrong moment and banging hips with total strangers. Brilliant.

I knew the show would end with All My Exes Live in LA, a place far away in every sense, and the song that taught me what BFE meant. What I wish I had anticipated was that she would try to rhyme Hackney with Tennessee and treat us all to a special version of this funny and original song, as good a gateway drug to the magic of Lola Kirke as any other.

Chloe Kimes

I first heard about Chloe via Lola’s Instagram account when they toured together earlier in the year. It sounds like the two became fast friends on that tour bus. I said at the time that it would be cool if Chloe joined the UK leg of the tour, and so it went. Her first time in London, her first time in England. Someone reminded her to drive on the left.

CK is very much a country girl, growing up on the idyllic-sounding lakeshores of northern Michigan. An outdoorsy type who can no doubt service the bus as well as drive it hundreds of miles. But all her songs have a large dose of humour, especially this year’s crop which I review in the piece below. She played them all for us: Uh Huh, Afraid to Die, Hammer & Nail Me and, of course, the one at least half of us had heard before, Coors Light. They’re all catchy, you can pick them up quickly, and she made a lot of friends last night.

I’ve listened to this music a lot this year but, as a card-carrying Gen Z, Chloe is particularly amusing on socials. At the merch stand I reminded her of one of the first reels I saw, involving a shotgun beer malfunction on a porch in the middle of nowhere (some might say BFE) 23 weeks ago.

Even Chloe’s fiddle player, Oliver Bates Craven, is hugely successful, opening up for Mumford and Sons in a week or so with Sierra Ferrell at the O2 arena. Chloe Kimes is a hard worker. Not only is she following her own path, but she’s also tour manager and bus driver for LK in the UK. I am confident she is the most talented bus driver in the world.

If you are in the USA, it is now a criminal offence not to hold a ticket for the Too Much Information book & music night in February, which culminates in a hometown gig at The Blue Room, tickets here!