Live Review: Beth Ditto & Annabel Allum - Koko, London 16/10/2017

When Beth Ditto announces a show, let alone a London show at Koko, there was no question that we had to make our way down to check it out!!

After a slightly later arrival than we wanted; we got ourselves comfortable for tonight’s support Annabel Allum, a 21-year-old singer reining from Surrey! Her haunting vocals scattered over dreamy guitar licks instantly took a firm hold of the audience; such songs as ‘Spit’, ‘Picture on Picture’ and the slightly more upbeat ‘Rich Background’ were our personal favourites of the night! Still being so young Annabel Allum has so much time to breakthrough into mainstream success; after tonight’s performance, we would say she is one to watch in the coming months!



As the clock struck 9pm, the lights dimmed and the magnificent Beth Ditto took to the stage, instantly breaking into ‘Oh My God’ which set the mood for tonight’s performance with the audience, the band and Beth unable to stop themselves dancing! Beth then proceeded to express her love for London as she explained how sad she was every time she had to leave, we can relate with you Beth! Few songs in Beth takes us back to her debut 2011 EP with ‘I Wrote The Book’ which made us feel as if we were actually in a European techno club (not necessarily a bad thing) with the booming bass and funky synths scattered on top, you couldn’t help but bust a move. The rest of Beth’s set consisted of bangers from her very recent Debut album ‘Fake Sugar', including single ‘Oo La La’ which has such hard hitting and catchy lyrics; another classic played was ‘We Could Run’ that has more epic undertone to it especially closer to the end which truly makes it a soaring pop-rock classic!!

After a short break, Beth returned to the stage for a considerable encore which consisted of a few songs from her previous musical venture Gossip which got the crowd as hyped as I’m sure you can imagine; but the real highlight was the finale which was of course fan favourite ‘Fire’ that had audience members singing and grooving from the top to the bottom of Koko!!!



A Beth Ditto show can only be described as a magical experience to witness & this evening was no doubt the best we’ve seen! Hopefully she doesn’t take too long to come back to her second home in London town to Wow audiences again!

Review and Photography by Joe Dick