Vee Richardson
Opening with an acoustic and violin-led rendition of ‘Little Toy Soldiers’, Seb Lowe and Kate Couriel establish the tone for the evening immediately: intimate, direct and unconcerned with unnecessary spectacle. Couriel has become a familiar presence in Lowe’s live band, but she also has a budding solo career of her own, and performances like this make it easy to understand why. Her violin remains central throughout the set, adding texture and tension without ever competing for attention. If there was one aspect left wanting, it was to hear slightly more of her vocally. The chemistry between the pair is clear, but there are moments where pushing Couriel further forward in the mix would have elevated the dynamic even further. At one point, Lowe described himself as being “fucking shit at talking”, though artists like this rarely need to rely on stage banter. The songs carry enough weight on their own. Between every self-deprecating aside was another lyric saying exactly what needed to be said.
Then came Sofia Isella. Stepping onto the Albert Hall stage in front of a packed room during sweltering summer heat would have been enough reason for most performers to simplify their approach. To strip arrangements back, stay still, and conserve energy. For Isella, that kind of compromise simply wasn’t an option. Across an expansive set, she moves between guitars, banjo and violin with complete confidence, never allowing the constant transitions to interrupt momentum. Rather than feeling ambitious for ambition’s sake, each change felt intentional and carefully placed.
Several moments stood apart from the rest. During ‘Evergreen Soldier’, two audience members are invited onto the stage, and later, ‘The Well’ becomes one of the evening’s most memorable moments through a duet with Isella’s violin teacher, Volkan Can. By that point, the violin had already become such a constant part of the performance that the moment never felt separate from the rest of the set. Instead, it felt like a natural extension of it. Even the encore maintained that sense of closeness. Returning for ‘Hot Gum’, Isella stepped down into the audience entirely, ending the set amongst the crowd rather than above it.
What ultimately makes her performance stand out is not scale but commitment. Nobody would have questioned adapting to the conditions. The heat inside the venue was impossible to ignore long before the final songs arrived. Instead, Isella delivered the performance as intended, refusing to let discomfort flatten the experience. For all of the movement, instrument changes and ambition packed into the set, the moments that stay longest are the simplest ones. Sofia Isella never feels interested in performing at the audience as much as pulling them into her perspective for an hour and change. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the intensity of the performance itself, but by the end of the set there was something strangely disorientating about it all. Not because it felt larger than life, but because it didn’t. Even in a venue the size of Albert Hall, Isella managed to make the personal feel impossible to ignore.
