• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Sweet Williams

Sep 21, 2025 By Nick Roseblade Photography by Nick Roseblade Web Exclusive

Matinee gigs are like solar eclipses, warm FA Cup finals, and pleasant late night train rides with no dickheads on them that don’t happen very often are something to relish and look forward to. This gig is one I’d been looking forward to for MONTHS! Misha Phillips, as well as being the Lambrini Girls drummer, also makes incredible music in her own right. 2024’s “Moulin Rouge is Next” is very rarely away from my stereo, and ears, and her Smoking Room project is also second to none. The gig was billed as Smoking Room, but I’d hoped for a few surprises. The headliner was Brighton cult heroes Sweet Williams, who hadn’t played in town for a VERY long time. The other added bonus was it was in the afternoon, and I could take my daughter. At seven she likes gigs, but there aren’t many we can actually go to together and our last one was getting on for about a year ago. She wasn’t aware of either act because, um, she’s seven but I’d played her a few things, and she was interested enough to come along. Or maybe it was the promise of a pint of pineapple juice during the gig that really made her interested.

Sitting on a stool/chair (it was hard to see much from my vantage point; Phillips played her flying V guitar with all the understated attitude you’d expect. The set was a mixture of old, new, borrowed and blue. Opening with “Tearful Breathless” from 2022’s “Everything Ends” Phillips launched into the seven-song set. The vocals were strong but breathy. After the opener two new songs were played “A Winner Every Time” and “Nadine”. During the set Phillips did what I liked most and didn’t really say anything. A few songs in she said, “Hi, I’m Misha. I play drums. I’m very confused now…” to big laughs. After “Nadine” there was a cover of Arthur Russell’s “You Can Make Me Feel Bad”. This was a delight, but, you know, mournful and with glacial sounding guitar. Two more new songs got an outing before the set finished with “Moulin Rouge is Next” a song from Phillips’ last solo album of the same name. These four new songs were heavy but not riff-fests. The lyrics felt poignant but full of hope. Or that could just be my perspective. “Moulin Rouge is Next” was the best song of the set. It’s effectively a cover, but more like a reimagination, of Jimmy Campbell’s 1970 banger “In My Room”. Instead of singing and playing guitar and singing Phillips had a backing track and sang along with it. Like the album version, the song started out normally, but when it reached the “My Favourite” line the record started skipping on. At this point Phillips disappeared from view and started, well, making a racket with her guitars. After a few minutes of this the song kicked back in again, but things weren’t as pastoral as at the start. Phillips remained hidden and started to produce walls of feedback. It was like being at a noise gig, but it was 2:30 in the afternoon and there were kids knocking about. I asked my daughter what she thought of the noise sections. She smiled, shrugged, said she liked it and suggested we should get more pineapple juice from the bar downstairs.

By the time we reappeared Sweet Williams were about to start their set. It had been six years since their last Brighton gig and expectation was high. Full disclosure, I like Sweet Williams and have a couple of albums, but I was here for Misha. As long as nothing bad happened during the next set I’d be going home very happy. The set was mostly culled from the new album “Four Five”. A triple record beast that spans, wait for it, 45 songs. They were nestled next to old favourites “Glass State” and “Ride A Gold Snail”. As I’ve only played the new album twice, it’s really bloody long ok, I wasn’t as familiar with the songs as I would have liked, but they all sounded great. The band looked slightly tense, but this could be because it was one of their early gigs with this lineup. Saying that they were very tight and hit their marks, apart from when the drummer played the wrong intro and everything came to a standstill while they worked out what to do next. Like Misha before there wasn’t a lot of chat from the stage in between songs. When frontman Thomas House did speak though it was a mixture of astute observations or ramblings. At one point he said “There is something, well, you know, um, you know, about matinee shows. They’re, um, kind of…” and trailed off. He was jovially heckled “We’re only here because you picked this time. We would have come back in the evening…” at this House pretended now to hear the heckled and looked slightly bewildered. This bit of pantomime made the crowd whoop it up. Later he said, “I never know if you should say the song titles before, or after the songs… but I say them after”, but at no point did he actually tell us the names of the songs. I wasn’t sure if this subterfuge was on purpose, part of his on-stage persona, being over excited and having some beers before the show or was a happy accident. It made for an interesting time having an unreliable narrator on stage and added to the excitement of the music. Sadly, they didn’t end with “Kill Me Jane II”. It would have been awesome to hear this line, who were super tight, get stuck in the groove of that song and just stay there for minutes, but as House said at the end “That’s it. We don’t know any more songs!”. Given House’s persona it’s hard to know if that was true or not. I’m guessing it probably was though. This new band hasn’t had long to practice and making them learn EVERY song would be nigh on impossible.

The only downside to the day was as we left Preston Park station we were confronted with a group of a dozen men, inebriated, and looking very pleased with themselves, dripping, in St. George’s Cross. They’d either just come back from London or were about to head up. It was with a sad pang that I realised that despite having a lovely few hours with like-minded people even Brighton isn’t immune to them. Then I remembered the exquisite music we’d heard and how we’d walked out with smiles on our faces, and I felt ok again.