Róisín Teeling

Arts and Culture Journalist :D

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Charlie Jeer is in his feelings

“I’ve just woken up,” Charlie Jeer says unapologetically as he answers my call. “I haven’t even had coffee yet.” He’s not talking about any old cup of Joe — he’s referring to a fresh brew from the newest DeLonghi machine, a birthday gift from his mum, used ritualistically ever since. This is all part of Jeer’s morning rite: coffee, affirmations and gratitude. “The second you’re grateful for what you have, you have so much more.” It would be easy to roll your eyes at a 23-year-old artist talking...

Dexter In The Newsagent brings bedroom pop to the big stage

Arriving at Colours Hoxton for Dexter In The Newsagent’s first UK headline show, the room already felt like I’d stumbled into a party that had been raging for hours. It’s hard not to imagine that same rush hitting her as she stepped out, the crowd chanting her confidence into place before she’d sung a note.
The stage looked like a sweet-16 fever dream, with floating letter balloons bobbing gently above her head and two mics set up side by side, teasing what was to come. Dexter, born Charmaine Ay...

Abel is the natural perfume brand speaking straight to your subconscious

For Frances Shoemack, fragrance is the most direct route to making the intangible tangible. It appears before language, before thought, slipping past logic and straight into feeling. On her way to meet me, Shoemack travelled through central London at rush hour, packed onto the tube at 8:45am. By any standard, it’s an assault on the senses, with layers of metal, movement and the residue of the night before lingering in the air. For Shoemack, smell isn’t something to be judged, but something that...

Dream Big is giving access-led theatre the space it deserves

On 6 February, the Pleasance Theatre, working with Camden People’s Theatre (CPT), kicked off their Dream Big festival. Marking a first for both companies, the collaboration invited successful studio-scale productions onto the main stage. For the festival’s first night, the Pleasance welcomed a staged reading of Em Prendergast’s Bury Me – Yerma Reimagined, and a full production of FUSE’s The Only Brown Deaf Man in England, written and performed by Nadeem Islam. Both plays were access-led debuts,...

Mason Alexander Park is making a mess of history

There is something deeply entertaining about talking to Mason Alexander Park at a time when they are (voluntarily) screaming themselves into emotional ruin eight times a week. Oh, Mary! — the feral, ahistorical fever dream currently tearing through the West End — demands that Park spends 80 relentless minutes unraveling in public. By curtain call, they are peeled out of wigs and period petticoats, exhausted and exhilarated. It takes a rare kind of control to make a mess look this good, but for P...

Hope Tala returned to London with a set that hit clean and close

Six years on from Girl Eats Sun, and freshly armed with the glow of her debut Hope Handwritten, the British‑Jamaican artist stepped back into London with the ease of someone returning to a place that’s helped shape every line she’s written.
On Tuesday 25 November, Camden’s velvet‑red cocoon of KOKO became the backdrop for a homecoming that felt loose, warm and electric. Tala throws the doors open within minutes with ‘Cherries’ and ‘All My Girls Like To Fight’, her biggest tracks, offered with z...

5 minutes with Planet Giza: The Montréal rap trio blending rap, R&B and brotherhood

When Rami B picks up our Zoom call, he’s exactly where Planet Giza’s records suggest he’d be: chilled out on a slow Saturday, coffee in hand. “I just woke up an hour ago,” he laughs. The mood is easy, but the thinking is sharp. Very Planet Giza. The Montréal-based rap trio leans into memory the way some artists lean into nostalgia, mining their own biographies and the half-forgotten DNA of early-2000s rap-R&B hybrids. It’s music built for backseat confessions and late-night bus windows. Toughnes...

Lleo is turning chaos into clarity

Roisin Teeling: Where did your music journey begin?
Lleo: I was really ill from seven to seventeen, in and out of the hospital, so I didn’t have a normal childhood. I stayed in my room and taught myself piano. If a real pianist watched me play, they’d probably throw up.
RT: When did songwriting become the outlet?
L: I began writing songs at twelve about my first little gay heartbreak. I went to music college in Leeds, and that’s when I really started to push myself. In 2020, I launched Lleo and...

Lleo loves a girl but they love playing shows even more

Lleo hasn’t performed yet, but they already seem at home in one of music’s most storied rooms. We meet just before their set at Sound Bite’s official launch party with Johnnie Walker Black Label. Fresh off tour, Lleo is settled rather than nervous — present, talkative and visibly buzzing to get on stage. As partygoers will soon see, there is a quiet tension at the centre of Lleo’s work. On first glance, they carry a grunge-leaning edge — blue-blonde hair and smudged eyeliner — that hints at dist...

“Being young makes everything feel world-ending”: Nadia Loren talks Kiss and Drive

It’s snowing when I speak to Nadia Loren, not enough to settle, but enough to make it impossible not to mention. The ‘Sad But True’ singer and I talk about the way the flakes catch on your eyelashes and how the pavements never quite turn white. It feels fitting. Loren describes her music as existing in the “in-between”, and I learn she’s just as comfortable there emotionally, too.
There’s a quiet renaissance in pop right now, led by women who are building worlds to belong in. Loren’s own world i...

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