4 Non Blondes Return with Power and Purpose at Shepherd's Bush Empire
- Desh Kapur
- 8 minutes ago
- 4 min read
O2 SBE – 24th June 2026
IMAGES / WORDS ALAN BRYCE
Shepherd’s Bush Empire had that familiar, beautiful decay humming through it on June 24th, the kind of room that seems to lean forward when something significant might happen. Even before the lights dropped, there was this low-grade tension in the air, like the crowd wasn’t just waiting for a band but for a version of themselves tied up in what that band once meant. It’s the danger with these shows: they can collapse under that weight. This one didn’t.
Lucia & the Best Boys stepped in first and did the right thing by not caring too much about the legacy looming behind them. Lucia Fairfull held the stage with that mix of sharpness and fragility that makes you pay attention, like she might snap or soar depending on which way the song turns. The band sounded big without being bloated. Lean, punchy, a little bit feral. They didn’t try to win everyone over so much as stake out space of their own, which made the set feel alive instead of dutiful. You could feel pockets of the crowd converting in real time, pulled in by that restless, modern energy.
Then came the shift.
4 Non Blondes didn’t arrive like a heritage act, they came on like something slightly unfinished, like a story picked up mid-sentence. Linda Perry walked out without ceremony, and there was this brief moment where the room collectively checked itself: is this really happening? Then “Train” started and the question dissolved. It sounded heavier than it had any right to, grounded in a way that suggested the years hadn’t diluted anything, just thickened it. And almost immediately, it became clear this wasn’t going to be a simple exercise in revisiting the past. The set pulled in newer material alongside the older songs, and the omissions were just as telling as what was played. Certain early tracks were conspicuously absent, not out of neglect but because they no longer seemed to belong to who the band has become.
They moved through “Lilah” and “Drama Queen” without fanfare, letting the momentum build organically. What struck me early was how little interest they had in polishing these songs up for easy consumption. “What They Want” had a bite to it, “Mighty Lady” swung harder than expected, and Perry’s voice, no longer the bright, elastic thing it was, cut through with this textured, unvarnished, gritty force. It wasn’t about hitting notes exactly as they once were; it was about landing them with more weight, the years giving them a deeper pull. The newer cuts sat comfortably among them, not flagged as such but folded in naturally, like the catalogue hadn’t been frozen but kept evolving offstage all these years.
“It Follows” bled into “Push and Shove,” and somewhere around there the band really locked into that sweet, dangerous spot where everything feels slightly on edge. “Nowhere” and “Strange Places” deepened the mood, stretching the set inward rather than outward, giving it a sense of shape beyond just a run of songs. The Empire’s acoustics seemed to tighten around them at that point, every drum hit bouncing upward, every guitar line hanging just long enough to register.
By the time “Spaceman” arrived, it didn’t feel like a throwback highlight, it felt like a pivot. The song carried more weight now, less wonder, more reflection, as if the questions in it had been lived through rather than just posed. “Wall Flower” and “Drop The Bomb” dug into the less obvious catalogue corners with a kind of stubborn conviction, refusing to turn the set into a greatest-hits parade, and reinforcing the sense that this was a band curating its present, not replaying its past. Then “Don’t Wanna” came through with a stripped-down defiance, before “Live Forever” closed the main set in a way that felt less triumphant than determined, like survival as a choice rather than a slogan.
The encore was inevitable, but not predictable in how it would land. When they came back on and launched into “What’s Up?” it felt like the entire room inhaled at once and didn’t quite exhale until the chorus hit. And when it did, it wasn’t nostalgia, it was recognition. People weren’t just singing along, they were unloading something into it. Perry let that happen, stepping back, allowing the song to become communal in a way that felt almost out of her hands. It was messy, loud, imperfect, and absolutely right.
“Hollow” followed as a kind of afterimage: quieter, more introspective, a necessary shift downward after the emotional spike. It gave the set a sense of closure without tying it up too neatly, leaving a little space for the night to echo.
What lingered walking out wasn’t the sense that I’d revisited something preserved. If anything, it felt like the opposite, that these songs had kept moving all this time, accumulating wear and meaning, and what we saw was just the current version of that journey. The roughness was the point. The looseness was the point. Even the gaps in the setlist, those earlier songs left behind, spoke to that movement, to a band unwilling to pretend they haven’t changed.
Outside, Shepherd’s Bush carried on as usual, traffic, chatter, late-night drift, but there was a slight dislocation to it, like stepping out of a room where something unresolved had just been aired at full volume. And maybe that’s what made the night stick: it didn’t try to resolve anything. It just let it ring.
SETLIST
Train
Lilah
Drama Queen
What They Want
Mighty Lady
It Follows
Push and Shove
Nowhere
Strange Places
Spaceman
Wall Flower
Drop The Bomb
Don’t Wanna
Live Forever
ENCORE
What’s Up?
Hollow
FOLLOW 4 NON BLONDES