Arriving at Colours Hoxton for Dexter In The Newsagent’s first UK headline show, the room already felt like I’d stumbled into a party that had been raging for hours. It’s hard not to imagine that same rush hitting her as she stepped out, the crowd chanting her confidence into place before she’d sung a note.
The stage looked like a sweet-16 fever dream, with floating letter balloons bobbing gently above her head and two mics set up side by side, teasing what was to come. Dexter, born Charmaine Ayokua, emerged in a fuzzy pink crown, green face gems catching the light. In an instant, the bedroom-pop theatrics that defined her early releases felt blown up to headline scale.
She opened with ‘Stranger to Love’ and, scanning the crowd, threw out a wide-eyed “WHAAAT?” at the sheer volume of the response, laughing as if even she couldn’t quite process it. ‘Eighteen’ followed, and suddenly, everyone was clapping on cue, arms raised and swaying like old friends at a birthday bash.
What defined the night was the sense that the room was made up entirely of friends, whether or not Dexter had actually met them before. She even introduced her guitars like old companions, each with their own backstory. The first, Sharif, was met with her demand that the crowd give him the biggest hello — and they actually did. Another got a mock-possessive monologue: “I don’t play about her”. She’s Spanish, her name is Stephanie. The audience responded on cue with a warm “hola”, and Dexter laughed.
When ‘By My Side’ began, the sound was pure coming-of-age soundtrack energy, the kind of song that makes you see montage lights flickering at the edge of your vision. Her voice carried both softness but with husk and texture, one moment making the venue feel like a diary cracked open at midnight, the next flipping the page and turning it into a dancefloor.
‘Care’, written for her dad, was the stillest moment of the set. The lyrics are blunt and close to the bone: “I feel alone even though I know you’re there, if I hurt myself would anybody care?” The room went quiet in that particular way where you can hear people stop moving. There was a strange ache of performing through absence, of letting him be everywhere in the room even when he couldn’t be there physically. After the song, someone shouted, “I’m so fucking proud of you,” and Dexter stood there for a second, visibly taking it in, before gently moving the night forward.
The second mic made sense when Jim Legxacy appeared, backpack still slung over his shoulders, as if Dexter has plucked him straight off the street. Together they ran through ‘Dexter’s phone call’ from his Black British Music mixtape. His delivery slid neatly into Dexter’s softer R&B pocket, their voices locking together on the hook with an easy chemistry.
During the final song, ‘Special’, Dexter accidentally told everyone to “get your shoes on” instead of “get your dancing shoes on”. She cracked up, we cracked up, and somehow the slip only loosened the room further, the floor moving even harder because of it.
- WriterRoisin Teeling
