Lovejoy hails from Brighton, England. They have been blowing up Spotify ever since their 2021 debut EP, Are You Alright? was released. That album debuted at No. 10 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart that year.

The band have released two more EPs and several singles since, with hundreds of millions of streams. The most recent EP, Wake Up & It’s Over, was released in May of this year. So when they announced they were playing The Howard Theater, it sounded like it would be a fun show.

Check out the official music video for “Portrait Of A Blank Slate” by Lovejoy on YouTube:

At the Howard Theatre in DC on June 6, the show had two opening acts, Crywank and Spilly Cave, who were both fun in their own right. But when Lovejoy hit the stage, the energy in the theater went through the roof. The band is comprised of Wilber Soot on vocals and rhythm guitar, Joe Goldsmith on lead guitar, Mark Boardman on drums, and Ash Kabosu on bass. The band seemed genuinely shocked at the screaming crowd, cheering for them to start.

Wilbur started the show by saying that this was the last stop on the Across The Pond Tour, so technically every other show was a warm-up for this gig. The audience ate it up and got even louder.

The band tore through most of their discography, which totals about 15 songs. At this point, everything is high-energy — not a ballad in sight! That made for an exciting show! 

I’m always interested to see if bands try to stay true to the recorded versions of their songs or if they change when they play live. Lovejoy did a great job of being a bit in the middle. There are horns on several of their songs and they brought along someone to play trumpet and keyboards to keep the songs faithful without resorting to backing tracks.

Halfway through the set, Lovejoy debuted a new song. What made this really interesting was that it wasn’t THEIR new song. It was a new song from opener Crywank called “Privately Owned Spiral Galaxy.” They brought band members out and they played the song together! 

The next song, “Scum,” was shut down due to an emergency in the crowd. And I’ll definitely give lots of credit to the staff at Howard Theater. They were passing out of water and making sure everyone stayed on their feet and safe throughout the entire event.

Once everything settled down, Lovejoy restarted “Scum,” and the show continued on.

The show was a lot of fun. It was a show where people just start talking to you. I made a few new friends just standing around between acts. And that fun attitude was in the music all night long. Lovejoy is definitely worth seeing.

Setlist:

• Call Me What You Like
• Taunt
• Warsaw
• Perfume
• Cause For Concern
• Sex Sells
• Model Buses
• One Day
• Consequences
• Privately Owned Spiral Galaxy (Crywank cover, debuted with Crywank)
• Scum (Stopped and restarted due to crowd emergency)
• It’s Golden Hour Somewhere
• The Fall

Encore

• Portrait Of A Blank Slate
• Concrete

Here are some photos of Lovejoy performing at the Howard Theatre on June 6, 2023. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Marc Shea.