I didn’t know Finn Askew‘s music well before 31st July. That’s worth saying upfront, because by the end of the night it felt like I’d been listening for years.
The Jazz Cafe was a venue I hadn’t been to before and I immediately got why it was the right choice for this show. It’s intimate without being small, the kind of room where you actually feel the energy of every person in it and the distance between the stage and the crowd is close enough that eye contact between an artist and an audience is a real thing rather than a gesture. There’s something about that size of venue that strips everything back. You can’t hide in a room like that, and Finn didn’t need to. For his first London headline, it was exactly the right call.
He opened with ‘Distance’ and the room was already singing it back to him. The R&B feel of it settled in immediately, warm and unhurried, and there’s something very Justin Bieber about the way he carries a song like that, easy and natural without any of it feeling studied or performed. His stage presence throughout the whole night was genuinely striking. Great eye contact, real connection with the crowd, the kind of comfort on stage that doesn’t always come naturally to artists this early in their career. He spoke to the audience like he knew them, because in many ways he does.
‘Dive In’ came next with an acoustic guitar and the room shifted into something quieter and more focused. It genuinely felt like being in the studio with him, like we’d been let into the room where the song was written. His passion for it was just obvious, right there on the surface, nothing performed about it.
Then ‘London’, played in London, and the fans around me were already reacting before he’d finished the opening line. There was something really special about hearing that song in that city, the crowd absolutely gassed to be in the room for it. The falsetto throughout was genuinely stunning, his band were locked in and lifted the whole thing, and it was one of those moments in the set where you looked around and everyone was just fully present.
He also played an unreleased track called ‘UP’ and it was one of those quiet revelations that live shows occasionally throw at you. It felt completely like him, fully formed, confident in its own sound. That kind of sonic clarity this early on is not something you can manufacture. It just either exists or it doesn’t, and with Finn it clearly does.
And then ‘Roses’. Phone lights up across the whole room, spontaneous, nobody asked. The song that first put him on the map when Taeyong of NCT 127 played it on a livestream and Jungkook later shared it to the world, helping it past 65 million streams. Most people in that room knew every word. Hearing it live in a venue that intimate was genuinely beautiful, the kind of moment a show gets built around without anyone planning for it.
‘Green Light’ closed the set and the beats dropping through the Jazz Cafe at that point in the night was the right ending to everything that had come before it. He killed it. The crowd knew it too.
After the show, Finn posted on TikTok: “London, that was the craziest show I’ve ever done. I believe I have some of the best fans in the world and I’m so unbelievably grateful. This show was so special and even though it wasn’t smooth sailing, I feel like it was meant to be.” It reads like someone still catching their breath and meaning every word of it. Standing in that room, you understood it completely.
SZA once commented on one of his videos: “I’m so glad you’re real.” After The Jazz Cafe, I feel the same. Finn Askew plays All Points East on August 29th, with more music on the way. Pay attention.
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Words: Lola Carron
Photographer: Jack Oliver