Blog: The Lemon Twigs (again)
On Wednesday night last week I headed over to distant SHEPHERD'S BUSH, there to go and see THE LEMON TWIGS. Executive Summary: they were dead good.
Originally I was going to go and see them with Mr M Sutton, who I had been with last time. I'd thought this had been only a few months ago, so was surprised that they'd had time to record a whole other album since then, but it turns out it was about 18 months ago, so fair enough. We had both had a GRATE time but sadly Mark was unable to come along in the end because he had a higher calling i.e. Aston Villa were playing (and WINNING) in the Europa League Final so he was off to watch that instead. This was entirely fair enough, LAUDABLE even, and it ALSO meant that I was able manhandle Mr S Wilkinson to come with me.
We met for a BEER over the road from the venue in The Defector's Weld, which was really nice and oddly FRIENDLY with people actually CHATTING to each other at the bar. We then headed over to the Shepherd's Bush Empire where we were sat upstairs, as me and the aforesaid Mr Sutton had been when we went to see JimBob last year, so I remembered that there was a whole BAR area up there. We thus had time for a further relaxing PINT before heading back into the venue, where we ending up STANDING along the back, behind the seats. This was FAB as it gave us easy access to both Loo and Bar, as well as still being able to see and hear everything perfectly.
With all that sorted out the band came on, once again in their four-piece line-up, and once again were AMAZING. It was like a BARRAGE of ROCK for the first half an hour or so as they reeled off BANGER after BANGER, relentlessly sounding AMAZING. They then did the same thing as last time of swapping instruments and STILL being amazing, and had lots of dancing and clear enjoyment of the brilliant SOUND what they were making. I must admit I found myself reduced to GIGGLING at how silly it was that one group of people could be so GOOD at all this.
The only DOWN side was that, with all the songs being equally amazing, there was no specific song that really stood out as amazing-EST. Normally at gigs you think "Hang on, they haven't done THAT song yet, it'll probably be the encore" but here ANY of the songs could have been the encore, or the first song, or at any place in between. It was a bit odd really, it felt like we'd not had the clear WOW moment because it had ALL been pretty WOW!
Apart from that though, COR, it was dead good - possibly not QUITE as good as watching your team win a European Championship, but I somehow doubt I'll ever get that feeling myself, so this was near enough!
posted 26/5/2026 by MJ Hibbett