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Oct 16, 2025 By Mark Redfern Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern (for Under the Radar) Web Exclusive

Two days before Miki Berenyi Trio were due to launch their North American tour at Pearl Street Warehouse in Washington, D.C., Berenyi (formerly of 1990s shoegaze/dream pop/Britpop band Lush) emailed me to warn me that the British group might be performing as a duo instead, as her life partner and bandmate KJ “Moose” McKillop still hadn’t had his U.S. visa approved, describing the whole process as “like a dystopian nightmare.” At 3 p.m. on the day of the show, Berenyi posted to Facebook “Moose’s last known location,” accompanied by a map showing him in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere south of Greenland. A fan commented and suggested the guitarist was out searching for the sunken Titanic. Furthermore, the day before the show the publicist for opening act Gina Birch emailed me to say that Birch had her own travel issues and wouldn’t be making it to the U.S. in time for Friday’s show.

When my co-publisher/wife Wendy, our 12-year-old daughter Rose, and myself arrived at the Pearl Street Warehouse there was much uncertainty as to what to expect—especially as we’d never been to the venue before. It’s in the Wharf district of D.C., only blocks from the much bigger venue The Anthem (where we had recently seen shows by Pulp and Alex G). Thankfully when we arrived at Pearl Street Moose was to be found alive and well at the bar, standing next to Miki. He had landed around 4 p.m. and headed straight for the venue to join Miki and their other bandmate, bassist Oliver Cherer.

Birch—a founding member of the ’70s post-punk band The Raincoats and who recently released her second solo album, Trouble, on Third Man—alas didn’t make it. Berenyi told me Birch would be joining them at the second stop on their tour, in New York City, but that her backing band still didn’t have their visas and so she’d have to perform solo with hopes they could join her later in the tour. In Birch’s place were a local D.C. band called Bottled Up, who were called in at the last minute by the venue (Berenyi and Moose had never heard of them before). The four-piece are described on their Bandcamp page as “freaked up art pop,” which isn’t totally off, although the excellent guitarist at some point played some riffs that sounded more like Shaft-era Isaac Hayes than anything by Roxy Music or David Bowie.

“We just fuckin’ made it,” said Berenyi once she took the stage. “Moose literally landed at 4 p.m. I get a text from him saying, ‘I’m in an immigration queue of a thousand.’ But fuck it, we made it!” she exclaimed triumphantly. The trio began their set with their most recent single, “Doldrum Days,” a standalone single that was #2 on one of our recent Songs of the Week lists.

Pearl Street Warehouse is a relatively new venue, opened in 2017, and fairly small, with a capacity of 250 people. But it didn’t feel cramped there, despite a healthy crowd to check out Miki Berenyi Trio. That’s in part due to the open plan nature of the space, with the main bar accessible to both the area in front of the stage and to the lobby, which also spills out onto the street. Technically you could watch a Pearl Street Warehouse show for free from the street, although your view wouldn’t be all that great. There’s also a balcony area with tables and chairs. The soundsystem wasn’t overly powerful, but it was enough to fill the space and worked well for Miki Berenyi Trio’s shoegaze guitars, with Berenyi’s signature ethereal and truly gorgeous vocals floating on top of it all. The band has no drummer, instead utilizing a drum machine, but it works for the band’s sound.

Next the band played two songs from Tripla—their debut album released in April on Bella Union—“Hurricaine” and “A Different Girl.” “We’re gonna play a couple of old songs,” Berenyi then announced. “You may cheer, but that just shows your age,” she joked before the band performed Lush’s “Undertow” (from their second full-length album, 1994’s Split) and “Leaves Me Cold” (from 1990’s Mad Love EP and the Gala compilation album released later the same year). “Undertow” was never a single and isn’t one of Lush’s best known songs, but sounded fantastic performed by the Trio—with Berenyi often stepping away from the mic stand and shaking her head back and forth to the music while playing guitar. It was one of the highlights of the night.

As Berenyi pointed out, and as was to be expected, the age of most of the crowd was 40 plus. Rose was definitely the youngest one in the room, although there was a girl who looked to be in high school, and also accompanied by her dad. Rose is of the age now where she comes to most concerts with Wendy and I. The week prior we played her Tripla, as well as some Lush songs, to prepare, although whether she knew it or not, she’d heard plenty of Lush songs in the background throughout her life. They were one of my favorite bands in the ’90s and remain a regular fixture on our playlists.

I’m not sure when I first heard Lush. I seem to remember hearing the Split single “Hypocrite” on BBC Radio 1 late at night, which must’ve been around Christmastime 1994 when I was home in London (I was at university in Los Angeles at the time) and was 18 or it could’ve been in the summer of 1995. I know that I first saw them live in 1996 (the amazing Lush fansite www.lightfromadeadstar.org and their extensive Lush gigography tells me it was July 17, 1996) when they did an in-store concert at the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street in London in support of “500 (Shake Baby Shake),” their final single from 1996’s Lovelife. I still have my CD single signed by the band. And I got a second copy signed for a girl back at university I had a crush on who was a bit of a Lush fan too. Two days later I saw Lush again at the Phoenix Festival about two hours outside of London alongside a stacked lineup including David Bowie, Sex Pistols, Björk, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins, Super Furry Animals, Beck, The Cardigans, Massive Attack, and so many other great bands. Then on September 4 of that year I saw Lush at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles with the previously mentioned girl—she wanted to leave before the encore, at which point I knew she wasn’t for me (I insisted we stay). Alas Lush broke up soon after that, in part due to the tragic suicide of drummer Chris Acland.

Post-Lush, Berenyi’s bandmate, guitarist/singer Emma Anderson, formed the band Sing-Sing with vocalist Lisa O’Neill, releasing two albums in the early 2000s. Lush bassist Philip King joined The Jesus and Mary Chain for a while. But Berenyi mainly stepped back from the music industry for many years. In 2007 Under the Radar’s Lorraine Carpenter conducted the first major interviews with Berenyi in over a decade to promote The Brit Box—a Rhino Records box set of UK indie-rock, shoegaze, and Britpop that I consulted on and also contributed to the set’s extensive booklet. In 2015 our writer Frank Valish spoke to both Berenyi and Anderson about Split and Lovelife. Lush briefly reformed from 2015 to 2016, doing some more touring (Wendy and I saw them at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 2016) and releasing the Blind Spot EP, before band tensions saw them break up again. Berenyi was next in the band Piroshka, alongside future Miki Berenyi Trio members Moose and Cherer (as well as Michael Conroy of Modern English and Justin Welch of Elastica), releasing two albums with them. In 2022, Berenyi released her acclaimed memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, and the Trio was partially born out of the need to perform at book events.

At Pearl Street I met one fan who had driven five hours from Pittsburgh to see Miki Berenyi Trio. He had under his arm during the whole show a stack of Lush vinyl for Berenyi to sign. (At some point during the set, Berenyi confirmed, “I’ll be down there later to sign stuff if you want to get all your old fucking records signed,” before adding that they might be valuable unsigned.) While I was talking to Berenyi before the show he briefly asked me to take a picture of them together. Later, while waiting for the Trio to take the stage, he showed me a photo on his phone he had of himself and Berenyi taken in 1996, with the singer sporting her then-signature dyed red hair and the fan looking every bit like a young alternative rock devotee from the mid-’90s. I told him he should have shown it to Berenyi and he replied that he had made a print of it and was going to ask her to sign it after the show. Around the same time, Wendy, who was standing up front preparing to photograph the show, met a man who said he had been the drummer in fellow ’90s British shoegazers Swervedriver.

Unlike the dress she wore in the fan’s 1996 photo, at Pearl Street Berenyi was wearing shorts and black tights, with a matching shirt. “It’s a bit warm. The velvet was a bit of a mistake,” she said from the stage. “I thought it would be fucking freezing over here in October. I had the heating on back home, that’s what I’ve been judging it on.”

The set continued with more Tripla tracks, with single “8th Deadly Sin” going over particularly well with the audience. “You’re doing a great job making us feel welcome,” Berenyi said, responding to the adulation. “Moose has been going for the last month, ‘What the fuck are we doing? Why are we doing this?’ But you’re making us feel great,” she said, referring to pre-tour doubts her partner had.

In fact, even before Moose’s visa issues, this was being dubbed as Miki Berenyi Trio’s “last ever North American tour.” The main reason is that it’s simply too expensive for a small to mid level UK band to tour the States. Moose also doesn’t like to fly (and Titanic-like sea voyages are also expensive and take too long). Before the show, Berenyi told me that the visa delay also caused very expensive last minute flight changes for Moose that further raised the cost of this tour. Unless they were offered a lot of money to play a festival or gig in America, it was unlikely they’d be back, she said. Garbage, who play much bigger venues, including recently at the nearby Anthem in D.C., have also announced that they won’t be doing full U.S. tours in the future due to how expensive it’s all gotten.

Mixed within Tripla tracks such as “Gango,” “Kinch,” “Manu,” “Vertigo,” “Ubique,” and “Big I Am,” the band also played “For Love,” a single from Lush’s 1992-released debut album, Spooky. The main set concluded with Lush’s “Ladykillers,” the iconic Lovelife feminist anthem that calls out the behavior of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis and Matt Sharp (of The Rentals and formerly of Weezer). Lovelife’s sound was more associated with the music of Britpop than their previous work, but in Miki Berenyi Trio’s hands it was awash with driving shoegaze textures and more akin to something from Spooky. It sounded revelatory.

“We don’t do encores,” Berenyi announced. “But while we have a bit of a drink and a vape can you pretend we’ve gone off?” After a brief pause they performed two more Lush songs—Spooky opening track “Stray” and Split’s opener “Light From a Dead Star,” with the first bleeding into the second. They concluded the set with “Stranger,” like set opener “Doldrums” it was another recent single the band put out after the release of Tripla.

When I was talking to Miki prior to their performance she asked me how Under the Radar was doing and I was honest with her about the challenges of running a fully independent indie rock print magazine in 2025. Before “Stranger” Miki pleasantly surprised me by announcing to the audience that Mark from Under the Radar was at the show and they should all subscribe if they want to see indie print music magazines like ours survive. Wendy was all grins and Rose’s mouth was open in shock. Afterwards I thanked Miki for the shout out. “I just said it to get a good review,” she jokingly replied.

Of course, after Miki Berenyi Trio’s excellent set at Pearl Street Warehouse, a good review was already guaranteed. If the band are serious that this is their last North American tour, then fans of Lush and the Trio would do well to catch their remaining dates (10 more to still go, as of this writing, including shows in Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles).

An epilogue: as we were leaving the venue we walked past Pink Tiger, a restaurant and cocktail bar. Near one of the glass doors was a singer/pianist who was performing a spirited cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” singing his heart out to disinterested diners and waiters. There was a speaker outside the restaurant and as I filmed him through the glass he acknowledged me and even played up to my iPhone camera a couple of times. As we walked on to our car I asked the Pink Tiger greeter the singer’s name—Jeremy Ragsdale. When I posted the video to Under the Radar’s Instagram account one of our followers commented: “Do they not know this man won X Factor Romania?” Research shows in 2017 he did indeed win season 7 of the Romanian version of the British TV singing competition, but now is the resident entertainer at Pink Tiger. If you’re in D.C. some night, go check him out.

www.mikiberenyitrio.bandcamp.com

www.instagram.com/berenyi_miki/

Read our recent interview with Miki Berenyi Trio on Tripla.

Read our review of Tripla.

Read our 2015 interview with Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson of Lush on Lovelife and the final days of the band.

Read our 2015 interview with Lush on Split.

Read our 2016 interview with Lush on their reunion.

Read our 2024 interview with Berenyi on her memoir.

Miki Berenyi Trio 2025 North American Tour Dates:

10/10: Washington DC @ Pearl Street Warehouse
10/11: Brooklyn NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
10/12: Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
10/13: Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB
10/15: Toronto, ON @ The Great Hall
10/16: Ferndale, MI @ The Magic Bag
10/17: Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
10/18: St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
10/20: Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
10/21: Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
10/23: Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
10/24: Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre
10/25: Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
10/27: San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
10/28: West Hollywood, CA @ The Roxy Theatre

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