More about: King Princess

‘Please Antoine’ King Princess asks, ‘may I have the pussy?’ She instructs the crowd also to ask this of her drummer before playing her queer-pop anthem ‘Pussy is God’. Like King Princess herself, the performance is cheeky and hedonistic, but heartfelt all-the-same.

King Princess, real name Mikaela Mullaney Straus, hasn’t toured the UK since 2019 when she’d only just exited her teenage years. Since then, she’s released her second album Hold on Baby, a collection of musings on isolation during the pandemic years, with indie-pop in-crowder Aaron Dessner contributing as both a songwriter and producer.

At times understated while at others rapturous, the album deals in depression and loneliness. Yet when performed live the songs sound freed from this melancholia. ‘Change the Locks’ and ‘I Hate Myself, I Want to Party’ are tender, but when crowd-sung sound like a cathartic group-therapy session. 

During quieter moments an introverted Straus obscures herself bashfully behind her guitar. When armed only with a microphone, however, this coyness dissolves to be replaced with a rock’n’roll swagger. During ‘Prophet’ she sways and stumbles across the stage in a graceful stupor. In moments like these her bricolage of songs sound heavier as Straus takes one of a few trips to the piano to smash the keys with angst and aplomb.

She unleashes her inner emo on songs like ‘Too Bad’, lamenting how it’s ‘too bad, I’m never enough’. This is seen also in her stage patter as she fluctuates between reticence and the emotional. Even when screaming ‘I love you’ back to an audience member she’s aloof, but later she verges on tears when introducing ‘1950’ - her breakthrough single about clandestine same-sex relationships is moving when sung by the many queer couples present tonight.

Yet most striking of all is Straus’ musical melodrama. London’s Koko, once a theatre itself, is ideal for lyrics like ‘It’s a curse to be your friend’. These soliloquies are dramatic but pervaded by a raw sincerity, never sounding theatrical and counterfeit as a result. 

Monologues become dialogues. ‘Let Us Die’ – a song about a protagonist instructing their lover to drive over a cliff-edge if that’s what it takes to maintain their relationship – is haunting when sung by an entire audience, like lemmings throwing themselves off the precipice. 

Straus herself meanwhile is hooked on this disaster-movie she’s created. Live, her sometimes downtrodden songs become sweetly joyous communal anthems of hope.

See the view from the pit, captured by Matt Chapman:

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More about: King Princess