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The Paper Kites, with Bess Atwell – Roundhouse, Chalk Farm – 24/02/26

“Mid-morning and I pour myself out
Onto the hot bricks, bad news and a burning sun”

Chalk Farm’s Roundhouse feels like Château Gaillard to a music journalist: there are no nooks in which to hide, no shadows in which to scribble. Compared to some of the brilliantly deprived hovels I’ve attended, this seemed more RSC than railway arch squat. It’s a complex of culture, and walking into its colossal pit, with its high ceilings and unfortunately thick columns, is enough of a spectacle to do away with an opener.

Thankfully, The Paper Kites spared no such expense. Their support act, Bess Atwell, took to the stage alone, save her f-holed guitar (or as I wrote in my notes, its ‘country holes’). Her set consisted of pure indie folk, occasionally underlain with a synth or string through the PA, always starkly immediate in her portrayal of the melancholic everyday. Whether it was a song for her sister, or recollecting her local Co-op and the cowprint walls of her childhood bedroom, Atwell delivered a deeply personal, sway-along intimacy. Songs like ‘Crowds’, where the singer eschewed the guitar for a tambourine, or fan-favourite ‘Time Comes In Roses’ lulled fans into a self-reflective stupor, easing them into the folk landscape of the headline act.

This may have been the first gig I’ve been to where cardigans and baseball caps were king. I’m reminded of the Libertines’ lyric, “There’s fewer more depressing sights than that/ Of an Englishman in a baseball cap.” There is, Pete, and its three backwards caps being donned by Australians within arms’ reach, with a jerseyed American chatting about quarterbacks behind me. I imagine that’s probably not as catchy.

I was shaken from my malaise by The Paper Kites walking on stage. The impression I had of the Kites was finger-plucked folk, pure and simple. Judging by their monstrously popular, 800million-stream behemoth ‘Bloom’, it’s what most people would expect. 

And that’s exactly what you got. The band gathered around one microphone for ‘Morning Gum’, the opening song from their latest LP, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It. They were a tightly knit unit (not unlike an audience member’s outfit beside me): six members, multiple guitars, shaker in hand. For comparison, it reminded me of when I saw Mumford and Sons for their Delta Tour in 2018, performing an unplugged version of ‘Timshel’ around just one microphone.

This impression lasted until the song’s halfway mark. The band quickly dispersed, bringing a fuller sound with an electric guitar and drumkit; the curtain behind the stage was illuminated a deep red, with peaks of silk acting as some kind of Appalachian backdrop caught in this bloody hue. 

Naturally, their set stayed within the still waters of folk, but not wholly. ‘Black & Thunder’ was a wicked R&B saunter, its keyboard sounding mightily similar to Marvin Gaye’s ‘Grapevine’. ‘Without Your Love’ ended in a mass of reverb, with lead singer Sam Bentley bursting into the refrain from ‘Heroes’ as the arrangement swelled. The seldom-performed ‘Walk Above The City’ lurked with a moody synth backing, while the emotional charge of ‘Electric Indigo’, the lead single from their sophomore album twelvefour, was carried by its hazy, Eighties-inspired drumbeat.

It was also amusing how, in a live setting, you can fully hear the Kites’ influences, intentional or not. I half-thought they were going to break into James’ ‘Laid’ when they started strumming ‘Change Of The Wind’, and the sappy Sheeranism of ‘On The Train Ride Home’ almost turned my hair orange. There were even moments, when the band were silhouetted, that I could’ve sworn the Brothers Gibb were on stage, though this is more due to hair length than any sonic comparisons.

The appeal of The Paper Kites (and probably all indie folk) is cosiness. Cloying to some, perhaps, but when half the band enter the crowd, parading a paper lantern, and perform ‘Deep (In The Plans We Made)’, a lovesick rumination on a deep-rooted romantic connection, how can your heart not flutter? Or when the band perform ‘Bloom’ around a single microphone, led by a banjo, followed by a mandolin, riding the harmony of a few thousand fans, you can’t deny that, in their songs, they’ve managed to find something special.

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