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Insecure Men, with Bell Practice and The Rebel – Oslo Hackney, London – 06/02/26

“I see you try and boil an egg”

Saul Adamczewski is something of a cult icon, but as with most cult icons, his popularity (or what some might call infamy) is just as much about his circumstances as his music: a psychotic drug addict, a South London squatter, a meth dealer’s teaboy – or so his Fat Possum Records bio renders him. My brother was a big fan of Fat White Family, Adamczewski’s previous band, so I have some idea, but it’s hard to tell how much is exaggerated. I suppose that’s how legends are made, an oral history passed from one poet to another, a series of Instagram posts flogging watercolour postcards and organising drone orchestras. 

If you take this hedonistic persona at face value, what sort of music do you expect? Probably Fat White Family’s filthy and frantic Champagne Holocaust, gritty and abrasive as scraping the sand from the paper with your teeth. The beauty of Insecure Men, Adamczewski’s latest band, is in the unexpected, with their flutes and heartbreak and boiled eggs. 

At Hackney’s Oslo last Friday, Insecure Men were supported by two intriguing, both brilliant acts. Bell Practice are Mimiko McVeigh (singer and songwriter of DIY indie outfit C Turtle), and Earl Cave (actor and son of Bad Seeds frontman), a duo whose hushed arrangements and twee vocals remind me of a sedated Moldy Peaches. McVeigh and Cave’s voices interplayed like an ouroboros, their lyrics swinging between the poignant and the outrageous. Whatever they decide upon as their first single, I’m sure it’ll be worth catching.

The other support act was Ben Wallers, aka The Rebel. Between the bastardised chirps of some arcade machine, the Country Teasers frontman told bizarre tales in a Stetson, his guitar maintaining course while Wallers sang of Iran’s nuclear threat and tickling someone until they pissed. This is music that excites your imagination, makes you wince and chuckle in the same four chords.

Insecure Men’s set started with a trio of melancholy, including two solo Adamczewski tracks (‘KENT’ and ‘Papa Baja’)* and ‘Tulse Hill Station’ from their latest LP, A Man For All Seasons. It’s hard to describe the beauty of these songs, gentle and sweeping as they are, the innermost thoughts of a lonely man. But that lonely man isn’t on stage. Adamczewski, surrounded by his band, is resolute, though still haunted by the rings around his eyes. Every brass rise, every tender phrase is a grave exhumed, a ghost exorcised, a brick cleaned. 

This is continued in the other slower numbers, like ‘Time Is A Healer’ and the album closer ‘Weak’, Adamczewski’s honest self-effacing, self-emaciating lyrics acting more as reflections than as epiphanies, more a look at the past with clarity than a realisation of the present.

When the band hit onto their upbeat songs, there was no less craft and personality. ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance (With My Baby)’ and ‘All Women Love Me’ from their self-titled debut came alive on stage: the blown accoutrements, double percussionists – all band members were as tight as ever, delivering a punchier, swaggering live version of these already tongue-in-cheek numbers. 

‘Cliff Has Left The Building’, the song which introduced me to the band many moons ago, was an amped-up lounger, swaying with coy longing, but it was the final song, ‘Cleaning Bricks’, which cemented the performance as immense. As energetic and playful as the song is, it wasn’t until the final minute or so of madness, of full-lunged flautists and drenched drummers, that the band seemed to transcend, showing their cohesion as a wall of sound. And to the saxophonist, who snatched his microphone from its stand mid-blare and dropped it into the instrument’s mouth as though he were feeding a hungry god, you made our night.

*The lineup I’m going by is from Setlist FM. I’m trusting that whoever decided to go out of their way to add a setlist to the site will be more familiar with Asamczewski’s solo output than myself. Although, I’m pretty certain they played ‘Alien’, which isn’t on the Setlist FM listing. Maybe, I’m the biggest fan of them all. Regardless, I am only using this to put a name to a track; the content, feeling, atmosphere of the performance is what I remember, and is what this review is based upon.

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