Violet Grohl Takes Camden - The Barfly Has a New Ghost
- Alan Bryce
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Barfly Camden – 2nd September 2026
IAMGES / WORDS ALAN BRYCE
There are nights in Camden when the ghosts seem louder than the music. You can feel them hanging in the brickwork, clinging to the beer-stained walls, lurking somewhere between the stage lights and the sticky floor. Every generation arrives convinced it's discovered something new, and every generation gets humbled by a room that's seen it all before.
The Barfly has that kind of memory.
On 2 September I found myself standing in the middle of it, waiting for Violet Grohl to walk out and prove whether the growing noise around her amounted to anything tangible.
Before that came Fiona Lee.
Support acts are usually treated like background furniture by half a crowd still queueing at the bar, but Lee had no interest in being ignored. There was something refreshingly direct about her performance, a kind of unvarnished confidence that filled the gaps before the headline set. The room gradually turned towards her. Conversations dissolved. People who had been looking at their phones suddenly remembered why they'd paid to come inside. By the end of her set she'd transformed the usual support-slot indifference into genuine engagement. It felt earned.
Then the lights dropped.
No grand entrance. No theatrical nonsense.
Just Violet Grohl and a band stepping onto the stage as if they'd been interrupted halfway through a rehearsal and decided to finish the job in front of a few hundred strangers.
Bug In The Cake arrived first, all nervous electricity and sharp edges, the sort of opening song that doesn't ask permission. It simply grabs the room by the collar. Almost immediately it became clear that Grohl possesses that elusive quality separating performers from mere musicians: people watch her even when nothing dramatic is happening.
THUM followed with a heavier pulse, the rhythm landing like a second heartbeat beneath the first. The crowd began to compress towards the front. Camden audiences pride themselves on not being impressed, but there's always a point where that pose collapses. You could feel it happening.
Last Day I Loved You carried a bittersweet weight, sounding simultaneously young and world-weary. The room swayed with it. Not in the clichéd hands-in-the-air fashion, but in that more authentic way where people stop talking entirely.
By Cool Buzz, the band had found a groove that felt almost dangerous. The song rolled forward with the confidence of a train that had no intention of stopping at scheduled stations. Then came Stimulant Breakfast, twitchy and kinetic, sounding as though it had been assembled from equal parts nervous energy and stubborn determination.
One of the evening's biggest surprises landed with Transdermal Celebration. Covering Ween is a risky proposition. It requires both affection and audacity. Plenty of bands attempt it and emerge looking like tribute acts. Grohl's version felt less like imitation and more like conversation, an acknowledgement of influence without drowning in it. The crowd recognised the song almost immediately, and the reaction was among the loudest of the night.
From there the set seemed to gather momentum with every track.
Big Memory lived up to its name, sprawling emotionally while retaining a tautness that kept it from drifting into self-indulgence. Mobile Star brought the energy back upward, guitars ringing through the room with that beautiful Camden roughness that only small venues seem capable of producing.
By the time Applefish arrived, sweat had begun dripping from the ceiling lights. The audience was fully committed now, singing where they could, shouting when they couldn't. The boundary between stage and floor was beginning to dissolve.
Sun Is Blind introduced a darker atmosphere. Everything seemed slightly more shadowed, slightly more introspective. It was one of those moments where a set stops feeling like a collection of songs and starts becoming a narrative.
Then came 595, delivered with precision but never sterility. Too many young performers mistake technical competence for emotional impact. Grohl avoided that trap throughout the night. Even the cleanest passages carried a feeling of risk.
Often Others may have been one of the set's strongest moments. It arrived at exactly the right point, carrying enough emotional weight to matter while preserving enough momentum to keep the crowd locked in.
The closer, Plastic Couch, felt inevitable in the best possible way. A song that arrived not as an ending but as a culmination. Every loose thread from the preceding hour seemed to gather itself together. The band drove forward. The audience pushed back. The room became louder and hotter and more alive than it had any right to be on an ordinary Tuesday night.
And then it was over.
House lights.
Recorded music.
People blinking as though they'd emerged from somewhere deeper underground than Camden.
What stayed with me afterwards wasn't simply the quality of the songs. Plenty of artists have good songs. What lingered was the sense of witnessing an artist in motion, still developing, still discovering the extent of her own capabilities, but already possessing enough instinct and stage presence to make a notoriously difficult room feel completely hers.
The Barfly has seen thousands of bands pass through its doors. Most are forgotten before the last pint glasses are collected.
Walking out into the Camden night, I had the distinct feeling that Violet Grohl would not be one of them.
SETLIST
Bug In The Cake
THUM
Last Day I Loved You
Cool Buzz
Stimulant Breakfast
Transdermal Celebration (Ween cover)
Big Memory
Mobile Star
Applefish
Sun Is Blind
595
Often Others
Plastic Couch
CONNECT VIOLET GROHL
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