Young dancers at the Ivy House in south-east London join the older crowd amid a renewed appetite for authentic, community events

The Ivy House pub in Nunhead, south-east London, has long been associated with raucous music, with the rock legends Ian Dury and Elvis Costello gracing its stage in the 70s, and indie favourites caroline and Kiran Leonard pulling in crowds today. But last Friday, it was a traditional Scottish ceilidh dance rather than a grassroots gig luring London’s cool kids to its sticky dancefloor.

The event is emblematic of a renewed appetite for analogue, in-person experiences among a younger generation plagued by a loneliness epidemic and fatigued by meeting people on dating apps.

Young dancers at the Ivy House in south-east London join the older crowd amid a renewed appetite for authentic, community events

The Ivy House pub in Nunhead, south-east London, has long been associated with raucous music, with the rock legends Ian Dury and Elvis Costello gracing its stage in the 70s, and indie favourites caroline and Kiran Leonard pulling in crowds today. But last Friday, it was a traditional Scottish ceilidh dance rather than a grassroots gig luring London’s cool kids to its sticky dancefloor.

The event is emblematic of a renewed appetite for analogue, in-person experiences among a younger generation plagued by a loneliness epidemic and fatigued by meeting people on dating apps.

(Rough Trade)
Collecting traditional songs of female struggle and strength, the Irish singer invests them with staggering power

Lankum singer Radie Peat’s extraordinary debut album begins without frills or ornament: just her voice, stark and low, each breath like air vibrating through the metal reeds of a harmonium. Singing Hares on the Mountain to the tune Shirley Collins arranged for 1964’s Folk Roots, New Routes, Peat accompanies herself subtly on Fender Rhodes piano before adding layers of Mellotron and Wurlitzer. Her simple, quiet approach is consistently startling and profoundly moving.

No Human Tongue Can Tell collects songs of female struggle, suffering, strength and endurance, although Peat only realised this, she writes in her liner notes, after limiting her choices by her “own mind and abilities” and “personal preferences”. Epic statements clearly aren’t her bag; her gut-deep connection with songs she’s sung live for years clearly matters more, with many delivered in new versions, pulsing with urgency.

After tiring of writing about herself, the British singer-songwriter asked the public to share stories to inspire her music – and they responded in their thousands

‘This project has changed my whole thinking,” Thea Gilmore says of her new endeavour, The Echo Line. “What am I getting from it? All of humanity.” Disillusioned with the numbers-chasing music industry and wanting a break from her personal songwriting after releasing 22 folk-orientated albums since 1998, the 46-year-old is “putting people back at the centre of it. I’ve said enough about me.”

Community building has been key to the Oxford singer-songwriter’s work since debut Burning Dorothy, released when she was just 18, through to her 00s breakthrough albums Avalanche and Harpo’s Ghost all the way to her most recent studio album, 2023’s Thea Gilmore: a body of work that has won Gilmore admiration from Bruce Springsteen, Richard Thompson and collaborator Joan Baez.