Live Review: Tom Walker - Hackney Church, London 26/03/2025
Tom Walker- A sheer delight by candlelight at Hackney Church.
Opening beautifully for Tom Walker at the stunning Hackney Church, support is from young singer songwriter Cordelia with her confident and charismatic set. Her folk sound with personal lyrics and friendly chat between songs suits the intimate setting tonight, as she jokes: “my name sign on my dressing room door had a random ‘i’ in it which I thought was cool, whoever made that was wrong!”, which has the crowd roaring with laughter. She addresses the viral nature of her song ‘Little Life’ saying she apologises if it has been haunting our dreams, but that it’s her song. At one point she asks enthusiastically: “Is everyone feeling very holy on this Wednesday?”
The song is well on its way to becoming a bona fide internet phenomenon, catchily soundtracking millions of TikTok clips, with people using the chorus to accompany videos of their everyday lives, peaking with A-listers such as Ayo Edebiri and Mark Ruffalo quoting the lyrics at the Critics Choice Awards, which is no mean feat for an up and coming folk artist. The track was written about how she started focusing on living in the moment rather than trying to chase success, a sentiment that is clearly standing her in great stead.
In a recent NME interview she spoke about her idol “Joni Mitchell said something about writer’s block, how you can never run out of material if you’re being honest with yourself and your own feelings… and from there on I was like, ‘I’m going to write a song about how I actually feel about something’. From then on all my music has been autobiographical.” Cordelia is playing the Camden Assembly in late May, and by her assured and performance tonight it is plain to see she will be headlining larger venues in the near future.
St John’s Church in Hackney is an unorthodox concert venue, and the Grade II listed Anglican Church was built in 1742, with a large capacity of around 2,000 despite its intimate feeling. It is particularly poignant for Tom Walker’s celestial stage set which is calmingly bathed in the light of hundreds of pillar candles, ironically mentioning that for a non religious person his songs tend to have religious undertones, with song titles such as ‘Blessed’, ‘Holy Ghost’ and ‘Angels’. This is the third intimate candlelit show, following nights in Birmingham and Manchester, in a week where he revealed he would to be playing Glastonbury, announced to an ecstatic Birmingham crowd.
Entering the stage with his trademark cheeky swagger, Tom Walker immediately quips: “ I’ll try me best not to burn the venue down and kick over seven candles tonight!”, his opening patter familiar to his adoring fans here in full force tonight. ‘Wait For You’ tugs on the heartstrings, with the simplicity of the lyric: ‘I’ll wait for you, I’ll be here to hold your hand’ resonating with the many couples in attendance tonight.
His raw voice sounds even more heartfelt in the church setting, especially with the poetry of lyrics such as: ‘Only you could make a bitter song sound sweet’. Throughout many of his songs, the beautifully intricate piano perfectly contrasts the anguish of his vocals. On ‘Holy Ghost’, the lines: ‘I swear I’ve known you for centuries/ your love is spiritual when you hold me close, your touch is biblical’ he pours his heart into his performance and gets a roaring applause. He jokes to the crowd: “We’ve never managed to have a real piano before on the tour- what they actually do at festivals is put a digital piano inside a real one!”
He shares that: “Every time my wife wanted to see me she had to get a megabus. Every time I we went out drinking I was sick, and I thought because I was Scottish I could drink her under the table!”. He eggs the crowd on: “Imagine this it’s a Saturday night and you’ve had seven pints of Stella!”. The guttural singing of ‘Burn’ gets the crowd hyped up, and his encore saving ‘Leave The Light on’ until last is simply phenomenal to close a superb performance.
Words by Brendan Sharp
Photography by Stefania Mohottigt
