MUSIC PREMIERES
You’d be forgiven for having a sense of déjà vu walking up to the last of Billie Eilish’s six nights at London’s The O2. Three summers ago, the pop star first held a six-night residency at this same venue, then celebrating her second album, ‘Happier Than Ever’. Thanks to the pandemic addling our collective sense of time, it seems far too soon for her to be back for another stint – and selling it out – but here Eilish is, nonetheless, concluding another successful run.
It might not feel like much time has passed since, but much has changed. For a start, Eilish’s brother Finneas no longer tours with her, his absence filled by an expanded band. On occasion, Eilish gets to show off her skills on various instruments now. During a medley of ‘Lovely’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Ocean Eyes’, she sits down at a keyboard at the end of the stage, while the roaring penultimate track ‘Happier Than Ever’ sees her strap on a blue electric guitar and, as the song reaches its thundering crescendo, get down on her knees and shred.
The staging, too, is more ambitious and more impressive. Eilish performs in the middle of the floor, rather than on a typical stage at one end of the room. Her platform is giant, with space for two pits for her band and a gap in the middle where, sometimes, a cube of screens rises up and down – at times, a blindingly bright wall of light, at others, a cage from which Eilish performs within. The whole stage is covered in LED panels that change colour or show different graphics – during ‘Lunch’, the star’s image is repeated both across the screens that hang above it and all over the floor beneath her.
Performing in the round is a clever production move that puts her closer to the audience and whips up the hysteria to even giddier heights. To get to the stage, she can no longer rely on backstage corridors, but has to be carried through the crowd in a box. By now, fans are wise to this, so when they see Eilish’s crew start making their way to the path to the stage, they rush to the barriers and scream their lungs out. Throughout the show, she goes right to the very edges of the platform, almost within arm’s reach of the audience, who stretch out to her in hopes of making contact.
Towards the end of the night, Charli XCX’s face covers the stage as ‘Guess’ booms over the PA, Eilish suddenly out of view. Just as her verse in the ‘Brat’ collaboration begins, she pops up on a b-stage at the end of the room, ready to whip her hair and rave above the fans in that area. She remains there for a heartfelt ‘Everything I Wanted’ before racing back through the crowd, taking the time to do a lap and touch palms with as many people on the front rows as possible.
She takes mishaps in her stride – during ‘Ocean Eyes’, she starts cracking up, eventually throwing herself from her stool and rolling across the stage. “I really spaced out for a second, sorry guys,” she laughs afterwards. “I was thinking about all sorts of things that weren’t that song.” Eilish’s performances have always straddled the line between pop pro and watching your mate, and rather than this being a disappointing moment, her candour and charisma swing the pendulum to the latter state once more.
There’s still plenty of that slick pop professionalism, though. Before ‘When The Party’s Over’, she sits cross-legged in the middle of the stage and makes a request of the crowd. “I’m using a loop on my voice and creating a harmony stack,” she begins to explain. “It can only work if the entire room is completely silent for one minute.” Her fans dutifully respond until, harmonies layered, she begins to sing the first note of the song, and the room erupts with screams once more.
“I’m so grateful to have gotten to play here for six nights in a row,” she tells the crowd before her grand finale. “It’s a very special honour and I’m so lucky to get to do this with you guys and have this life and have this connection.” She waxes lyrical about her relationship with London – the place she played her first-ever headline show as a 15-year-old in 2017 – and touches on where her journey has taken her since. “It’s insane where it’s gone and where it is now.”
As if to reinforce that point, she finishes the show with ‘Birds Of A Feather’, the world-beating love song that forms one of the key highlights of her latest album, ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’. It’s the perfect example of how Eilish has grown in the last three years and since the start of her career – always an artist who’s been able to write killer songs, but one who consistently finds a way to level up and tap deeper into universal emotions. Her latest O2 residency may be over now, but next time we see Eilish in London, we bet it’ll be with shows – and songs – that take her to even greater heights.
‘Chihiro’
‘Lunch’
‘NDA’
‘Therefore I Am’
‘Wildflower’
‘When The Party’s Over’
‘The Diner’
‘ilomilo’
‘Bad Guy’
‘The Greatest’
‘Your Power’
‘Skinny’
‘Halley’s Comet’
‘Bury A Friend’
‘Oxytocin’
‘Guess’
‘Everything I Wanted’
‘Lovely’ / ‘Blue’ / ‘Ocean Eyes’
‘L’amour De Ma Vie’
‘What Was I Made For?’
‘Happier Than Ever’
‘Birds Of A Feather’
MUSIC PREMIERES
Four years on from the ‘Actual Life’ series lifting him into the mainstream spotlight, Fred Again.. continues to feel unavoidable. The London producer and DJ born Fred Gibson has moved at a relentless pace, bouncing between sold out stadium dates in New York and surprise appearances at Sheffield’s 1,000 capacity Forge, while also making history as the first electronic artist to top the bill at Reading and Leeds in 2024.
Where the ‘Actual Life’ releases and his fourth album, 2024’s ‘Ten Days’, leaned into warmth and joy pulled from ordinary moments, Gibson has also sharpened his instinct for high impact club weapons rooted in garage, dubstep and jungle. That side of his output lives on ‘USB’, an “infinite album” first imagined in 2022 as a home for tracks that exist outside any fixed universe, including defining moments like ‘Rumble’ and ‘Jungle’.
‘USB002’, the second vinyl only chapter of the ‘USB’ project, brings together 16 recent tracks, many of which surfaced gradually on streaming services over a ten week stretch. The music was shaped live, in step with ten unannounced DJ appearances across the world from Dublin to Mexico City. Even with a Glastonbury style registration system in place, The Times reported that 100,000 people tried to secure tickets for the opening night in Glasgow.
Appropriately, ‘USB002’ feels alive and constantly in motion, helped along by contributions from close collaborators such as Floating Points and Sammy Virji. The rigid, techno driven pressure of ‘Ambery’ echoes elements of Floating Points’ 2019 album ‘Crush’, while Gibson’s take on ‘The Floor’ builds like the slow climb of a rollercoaster before dropping back to earth without warning.
The guest list stretches beyond the usual dance circles, with two Australian guitar bands popping up in unexpected ways. ‘You’re A Star’ reworks Amyl and The Sniffers’ ‘Big Dreams’ into a breakbeat driven rush, while ‘Hardstyle 2’ pulls the experimental post punk edge of Shady Nasty into an Underworld adjacent space alongside Kettama. Gibson’s real trick is his ability to connect with anyone. These tracks are not reinterpretations but full takeovers.
The visual world wrapped around the ‘USB002’ rollout reinforces the instinct behind the music. Phones were prohibited at shows staged in vast warehouse spaces under sweeping light rigs, while Gibson’s team shared striking black and white footage and created artwork for each single on site. Bottling that sense of urgency, the project is rooted in the thrill of the present moment, something Gibson seems able to summon simply by turning up.
If the ‘Actual Life’ series and ‘Ten Days’ captured passing snapshots of experience, ‘USB’ is defined by constant movement, a space where boundaries are removed entirely. Sitting somewhere between an album and a playlist, ‘USB002’ underlines why Fred Again.. feels so dominant right now, and suggests that his current run may only be the beginning of something much bigger.
