Instantly recognisable as something cut from a stranger cloth, Girl Tones snag your attention the moment they drift into view.
While the rest of the crowd melts into the wallpaper, they stand apart – unmistakably other. In the back room of The Victoria in Dalston, as the unforgettable Saint Clair readies to play, it’s clear: these two aren’t here to blend in. They’re here to bend the god damned atmosphere.
Standing formidably still and razor-focused among a sea of shadows draped in greys and blacks, Kenzie and Laila – Kentucky-born, bright as UFO lights – pop like retro starlets dropped into grayscale. Their trademark tight dresses, thick coloured tights, and Mary Janes hum with character, their hair bouncing in layered waves and spring-loaded spirals. Bare-faced and beautiful, they look like they’ve wandered off the set of an atomic-era sci-fi set. And honestly? It’s the perfect omen for what’s coming: a show rooted in pure authenticity and the kind of brilliance that feels just a little oh-so extra-terrestrial.
With sticks poised still and ready, a pretty guitar and an even prettier pedal board, the sisters launch into their first number with an admirable single-channelled vibe. No matter that the smallish, shabby-chic-meets-bohemia room is half full, Girl Tones are here and this is a rock show, as Kenzie tells us in no uncertain tones, compelling us to “Come closer – come closer!” Girl Tones have a lot to say and they’re going to make sure we hear it.
Kenzie’s vocals hit hard – short, sharp, and charged with a brutal, invigorating fury that detonates the room on contact. Choice? Forget it. From the first deliciously enraged, confrontational riff, it’s clear there are only two people driving this thing, and the rest of us are just passengers strapped to a rocket ship with no brakes.
Their focus is terrifying in the best possible way: unwavering, locked-in, hellbent on making these forty minutes feel like being caught inside a Kentucky whirlwind.
From the opening strike, Laila commands the kit. Her whole body coils around the drums, fusing with them until she is the instrument – arms and hands snapping with elemental force and near-mathematical precision. She’s extraordinary to watch, her blank, almost serene façade throwing Kenzie’s contorted melodrama into stark, electric relief.
Kenzie uses every inch of the small stage, jumping like something needs to get out, and writhing with her guitar to show us that for her, playing and singing are involuntary sensory compulsions that must be obeyed. Girl Tones ooze concentration and synchronicity; obviously they are sisters so familial closeness is a given, but these two have something extra –special; some kind of binary sensory proprioception between them that combines thoughts, music and instincts while they are on stage. What they create there is out of this world.
Oooh, that sound… the kind of cosmic junkyard thunder we hunger for, that unholy cocktail of raw talent, sweat, and pure, feral joy leaves us rattling, crashing and clanging like reverb tanks kicked down a stairwell, buzzing with our own dirty little surge of internal feedback."
The combination of those impossibly catchy and instantly recognisable riffs (Fade Away, Burnout, Again); the stellar guitar playing and drum mastery; that insistent, frenzied yet superbly controlled beat and perfectly pitched and modulated dynamics, make Girl Tones truly wonderful to watch– but that energy! Oh that effortless, engaging, entrancing energy that calls out to our own inner rage and distant memory of spiritedness… you punched it at us and threw it all over us whether we wanted it or not.
The music snarls and swells toward its breaking point. High kicks flash, feedback screeches, and the whole room teeters deliciously on the edge of chaos."
As the finale creeps in, Kenzie leans forward and purrs, “Do you like heavy shit?”— the kind of question that isn’t a question at all. Then she hisses for us to come closer… with the same sinister charm Hannibal Lecter used to reel Clarice in. And of course we obey. What else can you do when the conductor calls?
She drops her guitar onstage like a discarded carcass and slinks into the crowd, treating the place as if it’s a heaving mosh pit instead of a gaggle of drenched Londoners wondering how their Thursday night turned into electrically charged cloud of raw rock and roll. Kenzie hits the floor and writhes like she’s summoning spirits below the sticky tiles, twisting and coiling before rising again and stalking back toward the lights.
Onstage, she morphs into a delirious storm – marching, skipping, stamping, kicking, her blue dress and blonde hair spinning like a deranged Alice breaking out of the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, Laila sits welded to the drums, utterly unshakeable, pounding out that immaculate beat with the cool poise of someone who’s seen the end of the world and found it funny.
The music snarls and swells toward its breaking point. High kicks flash, feedback screeches, and the whole room teeters deliciously on the edge of chaos. Then, in a final moment of wild, divine release, guitar and sticks are raised aloft in triumph and left on the stage with nothing left to prove.
And just like that — bang — it’s over. A savage snap to black. Oooh, that sound… the kind of cosmic junkyard thunder we hunger for, that unholy cocktail of raw talent, sweat, and pure, feral joy leaves us rattling, crashing and clanging like reverb tanks kicked down a stairwell, buzzing with our own dirty little surge of internal feedback.
Girl Tones played The Victoria Dalston on November 13th 2025
