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Jonathan Coll enjoys a night of enigmatic indie rock from the Brighton band
Image by Frank Fieber
Black Honey are a four-piece indie rock ensemble from Brighton who have, through various iterations, been writing and performing since 2009. Having been born amidst a UK indie-boom period, they’ve taken elements of what made that period so special, and refined their sound through four studio albums. Their most recent album, last year’s Soak, is what brings them to Newcastle.
The band are fronted by Izzy Phillips; an enigmatic frontperson who injected life into the Grove’s main room. Battling against the inevitable ennui of a Sunday night in February, Black Honey quickly got the crowd onside with a punchy, hour-long set of indie bangers. The Grove is an altogether more intimate environment than some of the more prestigious stages they’ve found themselves on in the past, but this was tremendous fun. An excellent opening one-two of To The Grave” and I Like The Way You Die set the pace for the evening. Their closing tune was also one of the most familiar, as the crowd sang Corrine back to the band in unison. Their final stretch was particularly memorable, as Izzy asked the girls (and those who were gender non-conforming) down to the front as the gig came to a close, in an echo of their headline performance for NME’S Girls To The Front series back in 2019.
