Against all odds Lucy Rose returns for intimate Roundhouse gig

Lucy Rose and her ten-strong band take to the stage at the Roundhouse for her first headline gig since 2019.

Part of the In the Round series, last Thursday’s all-seated gig felt deeply intimate. Not just because the stage feels as if we’re in someone’s front room, with rugs and lamps scattered across the set, Rose’s latest album This Ain’t The Way You Go Out recounts her journey with osteoporosis following the birth of her son. A condition which left her back broken in eight places. It was, she says, “The darkest time in her life” and these songs are medicine.

Each track is introduced with a personal recollection of that time in her life, Rose tells how she sought comfort in a volunteer who’s in the crowd tonight, received tough love from a hydrotherapist who inspired the album’s title track The Ain’t The Way You Go Out, and veers on becoming too apologetic, “I know these songs are sad but I want you to know I mean them,” she says before launching into The Confines of This World, the emotionally poignant songwriting she’s made her career from rings true, “I don’t want to bring you down, but I need someone to talk to”. At the end of what she calls the ‘sad section’ she jokes, “We made it, you’re through the other side.” There’s definitely a sense of appreciation for both the music and the story that’s being told among the crowd, which isn’t a experience I’ve had before.

The new album is both devasting and uplifting, jazz-inspired tracks like Over When It’s Over and Could You Help Me, allow the band to shine as layered instrumentals fill the space. When they return for the encore to sing the song which started it all, Shiver, it’s met with warmth the audience joining in for the final chorus for the first time.

She goes out with a crescendo which allows her band to take centre stage before finishing with Interlude II which features her son, Otis, babbling and encapsulates the experience.

Set list:

1. Dusty Frames
2. Whatever You Want
3. Interlude I
4. Could You Help Me
5. All That Fear
6. No More
7. Conversation
8. No Words Left Pt.1
9. Question It All
10. Song After Song
11. Treat Me Like a Woman
12. The Confines of This World
13. Strangest Of Ways
14. Middle Of The Bed
15. Save Me From Your Kindness
16. Solo(w)
17. Light As Grass
18. Life’s Too Short
19. This Ain’t The Way You Go Out
20. Over When It’s Over
21. The Racket

Encore

22. Shiver
23. Sail Away
24. Interlude II