Kae Tempest remains one of the few people that can make spoken word cool. Their career reads like an artist’s fever dream of success. The prize-winning poetry collections, Mercury Music Prize nominated albums, a bestselling fiction book and a highly acclaimed play.
But despite all the accolades, until a few years ago it sounds like they were having a pretty miserable time of it. While on the 2019 tour for their 2016 album Let Them Eat Chaos they were struggling through panic attacks on stage to perform, grappling with an ADHD diagnosis and a lingering sense that something wasn’t right.
As for many people, lockdown was a time for surfacing that which you try to shove down. Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, going on to medically transition with hormone therapy and top surgery. It shouldn’t have to feel so radical, but God it feels so good to see a fellow queer person thriving in their own skin. On stage in London last night, Tempest was fiercely radiant in a sharp fade, suit and stubble, the happiest I’ve ever seen them.
They’ve also, excitingly, got a new vocal register to play with along with all that newfound swagger. It’s always a different experience to see an artist perform live versus the record, but it made their performance of tracks such as Priority Boredom and Move, from their 2022 album The Line Is A Curve, or Perfect Coffee from Let Them Eat Chaos all the more punchy for the added gravel.
The show at Village Underground, a spruced up Shoreditch warehouse, was an underplay gig — where an artist deliberately plays a smaller venue than they could easily sell out. It was indeed a packed crowd, with people squeezing in close to be near to Tempest, who has a thespian’s knack for making everyone feel they’ve made eye contact with the hero of the play.
It’s looking hopeful there’s a new album coming, with Tempest debuting five new songs including their latest single, Statue In The Square. Diagnoses in particular is a Molotov cocktail of a song lobbed at the wearisome culture wars. Tempest may have ADHD and be LGBTQA but “With all those letters I’m dragging around / It’s a good job I turned that MBE down” — cue whoops from the audience. Worried about too many people getting diagnosed as neurodivergent or mentally unwell? As Tempest retorts, “I’d be more worried if we weren’t disturbed” given the state of the world.
Of course, live performance also means not everything goes to plan. It was only moments into slick set featuring backing singers and a collaborator on synths, a single gauzy curtain and an LED strip light, that the electronics stuttered to a noisy halt. Tempest took it all in their stride. “Maybe that was the universe’s way of getting me to greet you,” they said, wise-cracking about it all being a performance piece on the destructive impact of technology before whipping out a blistering new poem about their experience of transition and all the awkwardness of a second puberty amidst this hideous high tide of transphobia. “How many strangers will I upset with my existence?” they mused. “My friends, with all the problems we have to contend with/ Why are trans bodies on the agenda?”
Tempest has never been one to shy away from the political in their body of work, but this set was more than just a rallying cry. They have a playwright's keen eye for weaving a narrative alongside, pacing back and forth across their body of work, reaching back through time — to thank their past selves and to connect with queer people who have been here since the beginning.
Tempest laid it all out with a mash-up of all their own lyrics from the show in one poem before launching into Statue In The Square, which projects forward to a future where the despised of today become the historic social justice heroes of the future. With the stage presence of a preacher, Tempest prooves they’re a prophet for our strange times.
