The rising star was in Oxford on the 22nd of March. This was part of a series of record shop outstore shows, ahead of the release of her new album, Cruel World, on April 10th.

We are huge fans of Truck Records and their outstore gigs, featuring big artists in smaller venues than they ought to be in. We last saw Holly Humberstone on the Main Stage of Reading Festival. There she confirmed herself as an exciting artist with an indie leaning pop sensibility. All three singles off of the new album, Cruel World, have been superb so far and there is a real sense of anticipation around the new release.

This was a stripped back set tonight, Holly playing guitar and one of her band, I think Seth Tackaberry, was on keyboards and additional guitar. She arrived on stage at 8:15 and played solidly for an hour and a quarter, more than you often get for a record store appearance.

Holly was straight down to business, opening with enormous recent single ‘To Love Somebody.’ It really set the tone for a fantastic evening as she played all her best known old songs and a well balanced total of six songs from the new album.

With the songs taken back to their basic components it really highlighted what an absolute talent she is, the songwriting craft really stood out. There are deep wells of emotions, clever observations, an excellent singing ability with a broad range. It was a loyal and adoring crowd who belted out all the words to her biggest hits and listened reverentially to the three unheard songs.

On the evidence of tonight the new album will be very strong indeed. We had already heard the brilliant ‘To Love Somebody,’ ‘Cruel World’ and the emotional powerful, ‘Die Happy.’ Each of the three new songs brought something different. Holly was very happy to share some insights into each one. ‘Beauty Pageant’ is all about the pressures women are put under to achieve societal expectations and how putting across perfect images on social media is the expectation and bane of artists like herself in the modern music industry. ‘Lucy’ is about a close friend and how hard it is to grow up, how nobody knows what they are doing and how anyone is supposed to achieve anything when, in Holly’s words, “The World is f***ing terrifying right now.” This one had more of a theatrical feel, a bit more akin to The Last Dinner Party. The last new song, ‘White Noise’ was completely different, though Holly described the version we were hearing tonight as very different to the recorded one. She described herself as a very observational writer, influenced by everything going on around her. This track was written on a trip to Nashville, so surrounded by different flavours to the rest of the album. She described ‘White Noise’ as pop energy with ripples of country. It is all about crying in a club and being a “hot mess.”

All of the old tracks are welcomed by the audience, ‘Scarlett,’ ‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’ and ‘Deep End’ all achieving huge reactions. Throughout the set Holly is a polite and attentive host, regularly checking in with the crowd to make sure everyone is okay.

It has to end and it is a shame, it would have been great to hear all the new album. This is clearly going to be a big step up in quality from her very decent debut. We shall just have to wait a couple of weeks.

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