---

The Molotovs, with Soaked and The Sukis – Electric Ballroom, London – 23/10/25

When I was seventeen, the closest that I got to any kind of musical notoriety was performing a naff cover of ‘The Scientist’ on my sixth form’s staff room balcony to a sea of bored faces and poorly hidden bald spots. Certainly, I was nowhere near touring with the Sex Pistols or Blondie, topping vinyl charts, nor headlining famous venues. I wasn’t even close to getting a pity-smile from a friend’s mum. 

The Molotovs evidently haven’t had this issue. The sibling duo of Mathew and Issey Cartlidge have done all of the above (bar the poor Coldplay cover) before the age of twenty, having grafted through 500 gigs across continents and sticky floors. Their biggest London headline show yet, at Camden’s Electric Ballroom, is the culmination of their hard work, packed to the rafters with old school punks and young blood mods, as though Paul Weller had written ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’.

The venue filled up quickly, with sizable crowds forming for the night’s support acts. Soaked, the openers, had the punch of Buzzcocks, the look of Supergrass, the ineligibility of a full-throttle Lydon, while The Sukis seemed more indebted to 2000s garage and indie rock, with strains of The Strokes, The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand laced amongst the riffs. They both had the noise, the shades and the attitude to pump up a crowd already slathering for The Molotovs.

By the time that the Cartlidge siblings took to the stage – frontman Mathew with his whistle and Rickenbacker; bassist Issey bringing the Cool Britannia with her Union Flag dress – the Ballroom floor was already a carpet of spilled beer and dancing feet. Their set was a non-stop rattle of rock, most songs unreleased, the majority under the three-minute mark, all punctuated by the odd Bowie cover (‘Suffragette City’ and ‘Rebel Rebel’). 

It’s hard to remember where one track ended and another begun, but only because a Molotovs gig is not there to offer easy moments. There are no reprieves to sort out your hair, no moments to snatch a viral TikTok of the onstage antics. A Molotovs gig, as far as I can tell, is a conduit for passion, for angst, for some ungraspable, inextricable communal urge. They are a band who don’t shy away from politics – Issey’s impassioned speech against flag-hijacking ‘cultural pessimism’ is proof of this – and in their music, they provide their audience with a platform to rage, to dance against injustice or pessimism or just a bad day at work, and to do all of this in a crowd of likeminds doing the same.

That’s the best way I can explain their Electric Ballroom show. I don’t need to list off every song they played; you’ll hear them in good time. The Molotovs are a band that perform as tightly as any other, with more energy than most, and considering their age, for plenty more years to come. 

Pop your email below and never miss an article again!