Six years on from Girl Eats Sun, and freshly armed with the glow of her debut Hope Handwritten, the British‑Jamaican artist stepped back into London with the ease of someone returning to a place that’s helped shape every line she’s written.
On Tuesday 25 November, Camden’s velvet‑red cocoon of KOKO became the backdrop for a homecoming that felt loose, warm and electric. Tala throws the doors open within minutes with ‘Cherries’ and ‘All My Girls Like To Fight’, her biggest tracks, offered with zero hesitation. The bossa‑nova drum lines, the feather‑light guitars, her voice settling over everything like warm dusk. By the time she slips into ‘Jumping the Gun’, the room is already moving, and couples in the back start dancing on instinct. It’s as if the venue’s edges have softened just for the night.
Between tracks, Tala talks about London. The pressure, the familiarity, the way coming home still knocks something loose. Fresh from Manchester, she tells London to “be less polite, like them,” and the crowd cracks open a little more.
The night’s sharpest emotional cut arrives when she asks who’s been with her since the early days, who remembers ‘I Can’t Even Cry’. When the chords land, her whole expression shifts. She admits it’s her favourite to sing and her eyes glisten. There’s a beat where she just looks out into the room. A full circle quietly snaps into place.
The tone flips entirely with a bright, cheeky cover of Lily Allen’s ‘Smile’, which the crowd devours instantly. It’s light, London-coded and the crowd sings along like they’ve been waiting for someone to resurrect it. Later, she brings her dad onstage, and the venue erupts into an unplanned, messy, genuinely sweet ‘Happy Birthday’. KOKO briefly stops being a venue and becomes a house party with better lighting.
Tala closes with ‘Leave It on the Dancefloor’, and the instruction is taken literally — bodies moving, drinks in the air, zero overthinking. It’s the loosest moment of the night, and maybe the truest. Hope Tala is clearly in motion, but she’s not trying to package it as anything. She leaves the stage the same way she moved through the set: calm, controlled and quietly magnetic.
- WriterRoisin Teeling
