During the Great Escape festival, central Brighton feels like a slightly sleazier, moodier version of one of those waiting rooms on the X Factor. Almost everyone you see seems to have just come off stage or be waiting their turn. There’s a definite sense of competition in the air, and musical ‘content creators’ roam around interviewing and vox-popping like leather-jacketed versions of Ant & Dec. The streets teem with artists aspiring to emulate those who’ve come before them, playing this famed, lily-pad-like festival across which many musicians have hopped on their way to the mainstream. Previous performers including Stormzy, Fontaines DC, Sam Fender, Charli XCX and even the king of arithmetic-adjacent album titles himself Ed Sheeran tell you that tomorrow’s headliners and household names are here – somewhere. The key – in among a sea of cigarette rolling, guitar lugging artists – is to find them. Watching Alice SK on Saturday night is to feel that there might be a chance you’ve done just that.
Now, before I give you a rundown of Alice’s set – and in the interests of this esteemed site’s journalistic credibility – I should explain that Alice SK is not a new discovery for me. I’ve been a fan for a while and – given that I married her sister last year – I am also now, in fact, family. Away from the Scrabble board, ‘nepotism’ may not be a word that fills you with fondness. But, given that the upper echelons of the music industry are so saturated with it (I’m looking at you Cruz Beckham and the Breakers), why don’t we reclaim just a little piece of it for the independents. The point is, Alice SK’s live show is intimate, captivating, sometimes funny and always full of emotional heft. Judging by the room’s reaction tonight – I’m not the only one who thinks so.
The South London singer is playing a prized 7pm slot upstairs at the Hope & Ruin – a long-established, shabby chic giggers paradise that has hosted Adele and Dua Lipa down the years as well as putting on The Strokes first ever UK gig back in 2001. I position myself close to the stage on the left, and the 150-capacity room is quickly full to the brim with pint-wielding, sonically curious festival goers comparing notes on the acts they’ve caught this weekend so far. Glancing out of the door to my left as it briefly swings open, I notice a queue that snakes down the stairs and onto the street below.
I’m used to watching Alice play shows with a healthy contingent of vocal friends and family in the audience, but tonight there are only 3 of us in ‘her corner’. Soon though, after she and her four-piece band have glided on stage and delivered the dramatic, keys-lead ‘Intro’ before SK picks up her acoustic and merges seamlessly into the folkier, sunnier sounding ‘When you Leave’, engagement and warmth spread through this sea of strangers. The band wear matching white t-shirts with Alice in a denim gilet giving them a pleasing, Blondie-like aesthetic. Musically, SK, somewhat like Lily Allen, has a gift for crafting catchy, uplifting and wryly humorous songs that still brim with emotional profundity in both their composition and delivery. The soon to be released ‘Foolish Me’, with its 80s synth line, poppy chorus and sarcastically self-critical lyrics is maybe the best example of this. During its opening bars, SK introduces her band by name, and with her own introduction taking us right up to the lyrics, she segues into the song’s first lines without missing a beat. It’s a slick move, belying a now seasoned performer and prompts the solo attendee to my left to nod appreciatively, get out his phone, open his notes app and write, simply ‘Alice SK’ – the modern introvert’s answer to asking for an autograph. Having previously lived with Alice, I witnessed the conception of ‘Foolish Me’ a couple of summers back and can remember enjoying that semi-mystical experience of watching and listening to somebody plucking inspiration from the clouds, then animating it, vocalising it and making it into something tangible and real. Anyone who’s seen Paul McCartney getting to work in Peter Jackson’s ‘Get Back’ will know what I’m talking about. In the case of that analogy, I was Ringo – semi-inert, smoking and smiling somewhere near the back of the room, just happy to be there.
The set continues with the slow, delicate ‘Yellow Rose’ before SK and her band, who are tight throughout, air another unreleased track ‘Process’. It builds, sultry and slinking with a dash of RAYE about it, into a trademark cathartic chorus. Her chat between songs is funny and open, and she lets the crowd in on the travails of her love life as well as the impact that having her Instagram account hacked and deleted earlier this year had on her abilities to function and promote herself as an independent artist. Resilience is clearly in the DNA of SK’s music, and the set closes with standout track ‘Hollywood Sunset’ released on her EP of the same name last year. Its lyrics talk to falling head over heels at first sight, picturing a life with somebody before you’ve even interacted with them (“Before I’ve even said hello, the credits start to roll”), and the dark humour and self-criticism that come when, as Alice puts it, “you realise on your first date that you actually hate the way they chew, and see that this just isn’t going to work out”. It’s a building, atmospheric track that sees SK show off a range of vocal styles starting softly before ending in a purging howl that pairs beautifully with the harmonies of her backing singer tonight.
SK and the band leave the stage to a lengthy ovation, and I notice that throughout the set I’ve not seen that door swing open once. There can be no greater compliment from a festival crowd than that. Alice SK’s songs talk to heartbreak, loss, longing and confusion with a palatable dusting of humour, commonality, resilience and trusting in the process. They are captivating tales of hope and ruin – and then hope again.
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