Live Review: Jehnny Beth - Camden Assembly, London 31/10/2025
On the final night of her tour, Jehnny Beth delivers a celebration of her new album with a powerfully raw show at Camden Assembly for night two that shows above all else why she’s the man.
Promoting the album You Heartbreaker You, Jehnny Beth can deliver a barnstormer of a show that holds nothing back. Camden Assembly is a tightly packed venue for her to deliver on and it’s sweaty long before for Genn; the latest Brighton based trans-national DIY act embracing the scene head on and making waves across the board (unfortunately, due to some issues prior to doors I was unable to make it into their show, but I’ve booked a ticket to see them at the Shacklewell Arms early next year and you should too). Jehnny Beth took the stage to great reception and launched into Broken Rib with a candid, confrontational approach tackling real fears and honesty head on: “we learn to breathe with a broken rib,” she charts life at a disadvantage from the off, bringing the house down. The atmosphere is immaculate – some fans who have been there both nights praise the improved scene and it doesn’t take long for the crowd to grove and people to start dancing long before I’m the Man, a rallying cry against gender nonconformity that’s appropriately ferocious and a mission statement for her post Savages solo career if there ever was one.
Despite launching debut album To Love is To Live in 2020, due to the pandemic this is her first time touring solo and it is long overdue. This feels like a two album tour as a result and two nights are justified - No Good For People has echoes of The Kills in its grand overture as she talks about wearing them down, establishing herself and who she is and how she’s still standing despite of it all. Her inspiration for the track comes from; of all places – True Detective – “There’s a scene at the end where Matthew McConaughey says that he can be hard to live with”, Beth wrote about the single – “I don’t mean to, but I can be… critical. Sometimes I think I’m just not good for people… I wear them down.” To Beth, it “questions the inability to coexist with others and the delicate balance where the truth can be heartbreaking.” The raw emotional open-ness of this album makes it shine more than others operating in the same field- as confident a stage performer as anyone else you’ll see, lending her years of experience of touring with Savages for a centre stage show that rivals all of them.
Influences are everywhere on this live record – the album explores anxieties and the struggles of long-term relationships, she comes on stage wearing Johnny Hostile merch of her long-term collaborator, and the band’s performance is fantastic to see live supplement her. “How many years are we gonna last?” Stop Me Now allows her to share her vulnerabilities in a relationship as much as sense of self-worth – I See Your Pain takes all the pain of the audience and allows them to shine it through together.
The highlight of the set is a standing crowd-surf to To Love is to Live which I was in the pit for and that couldn’t have gone down better – encouraging women to get further forward in the pit predominated by men, Beth allows for an inclusive nature of her gigs that most other artists fail to take into account. The performance of I’m The Man supplements this – “I’m the man, the one you hate, don’t you understand? He’s like me, the man… I’m the man, I’m not different, we’re all human…” her statement is ferocious, raw and full of anger.
“I’m the man, there’s no bitch in town, who doesn’t understand how hard my dick can be,” the lyrics bite, and when performed by Beth live it has an instant impact on the audience because she just holds nothing back and goes for it with all her energy in a rawer way feels incredibly powerful – all the while whilst being held-aloft in the air. Its primal feeling of aggression and visceral nature of the song makes it pretty much the essential set-piece and cornerstone of Beth’s live solo career – the intense guitar riffs supplementing the nature of its angry macho rallying cry; lured in by its original premiere on Peaky Blinders series five. Usually, a song like this would be a set-closer; but she drops it mid-set and just keeps going with the fury of an artist at the peak of her powers.
It's an album show, and Beth has time to run through You Heartbreaker You in pretty much its full length, leaving everything on the table in a candid, powerful study of the human consciousness. It’s self-controlled hatred of self and the industrial sound really manages to find that line between punk and art-pop that would be impossible to tie down to either genre; yet it feels as essential for both at the same time. The album is all noise – and all the better for it: and in a tightly packed venue it’s the best possible setting for it to be delivered in. Like her past record there are touches of a brasher, rawer Bowie on her live sets – confident and proudly dedicating music to the bisexuals in the audience, openly encouraging people to believe in themselves. Halloween couldn’t have been spent in a better way than watching Beth tear through her live show with the fury and anger of a star at the top of her game.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
