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Show number 3145 of Frank Turner‘s 21-year career as a solo artist is the second of two sold-out nights at the 800-capacity Scala, the former cinema turned nightclub in Kings Cross, where punk rock godfathers The Stooges famously played their first UK shows in the summer of ’72. Turner can play much, much bigger venues in the capital and indeed worldwide – show 3000 on his schedule was staged last February in front of 10,000 fans a few miles north of here, at Alexandra Palace, and later this year his bespoke Lost Evenings festival will take place across four nights at the 4,000 capacity South Side Ballroom in Dallas, Texas – but this more intimate run, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his first EP, Campfire Punkrock, offers an opportunity for fans to hear their favourite songs at their most raw, stripped back and impactful.
The evening opens with a striking set from Katacombs, aka Miami-born singer/songwriter Katerina Kiranos, drawing heavily from her 2025 album Fragments Of The Underwater. A gifted storyteller and magnetic presence, her dark, haunting songs, are delivered to a respectful hush, with Heaven Is… and Old Fashioned high points of a set in which her powerful voice and acoustic guitar are augmented by self-created backing tracks she credits as The Weeping Souls, a clever nod to Turner’s band The Sleeping Souls. Having introduced spellbinding set closer You Will Not as a song written about a toxic man, now resonant as an indictment of the many toxic men running the current “shit show” administration in her homeland, she ends her performance with the defiant amended lyric “You will not be my President“. Excellent.
Released on May 15, 2006 on British independent label Xtra Mile Recordings, Frank Turner’s solo debut EP Campfire Punkrock set out a foundational template for the second act of his career following the break up of his brilliant post-hardcore band Million Dead: warm, witty, open-hearted songs informed by punk rock, Woody Guthrie, Americana, and the naked, emotional immediacy of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.
“I was raised in Middle England, not in Nashville, Tennessee, and the only thing I’m offering is me,” he sang on the EP’s opening track Nashville, Tennessee, song two in black type on tonight’s setlist, promising those who cared to listen, “a simple scale on an old guitar, and a punk rock sense of honesty.”
From such humble aspirations, legends are born, and ten albums into his career, Turner’s capacity to connect with and charm his audience is a thing of rare beauty, and a genuine joy to behold at close quarters. The 44-year-old might jokingly suggest that no-one but him gives a shit about deep cuts such the Charles Dickens-inspired The Resurrectionists, single number six from 2022’s FTHC, but regardless of where he dips into his back catalogue tonight, everyone in the room seems to know every single word. Thatcher Fucked The Kids may lament the damage done to society by succession of self-serving British politicians, but Turner has created his own supportive, nurturing and ever-evolving community, and you can tell just how much songs such as Recovery and Be More Kind mean here to all present.
“I’d like to teach you four simple words,” he sings on Tape Deck Heart‘s Four Simple Words, “so the next time you come to a show, you could sing those words back at me, like they’re the only words that you know.”
Mission accomplished.
There’s a tender dedication to late Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison ahead of a beautiful cover of The Modern Leper, and a sweet note of nostalgia introducing East Finchley – a reminder that Turner can capture ‘Big Smoke’ life as evocatively as Ray Davies or Shane MacGowan – before tried and trusted roof-raising big hitters Photosynthesis and I Still Believe spread joy and positivity on the home straight.
“We won’t all be here this time next year,” Turner sings on Polaroid Picture, a poignant and devastatingly simple reminder to cherish those we hold dear while the opportunity still exists, and its nights like this, with shared songs that “sound like home”, that you remember just how powerful and wonderful music can be in a world where little else makes sense.
A special night.
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