Lambrini Girls played a Monday night show at Newport Music Hall with opening act Edging. This is the band’s first ever show in Columbus, and it comes in promotion of their recent album, Who Let the Dogs Out, released in January 2025.
Lambrini Girls—vocalist/guitarist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Selin Maciera-Boşmelmez, joined live by drummer Misha Phillips—hail from the prolific music scene of Brighton, England, which has also produced acts such as The Kooks, Electrane, Sea Power, Squid, The Maccabees, Porridge Radio, and The Go! Team.
Likened to Amy Taylor’s Amyl and the Sniffers for their brash lyrics, confrontational vocals, and raw punk energy, Lambrini Girls are crass, subversive, and politically charged. Their role in the mainstream music scene mirrors that of notoriously vocal Belfast group, Kneecap, who were slotted to perform at The Newport on October 17 of this year but cancelled due to legal fallout from ongoing protests.
Despite Kneecap’s silencing, this show was a full-throttle free speech exercise, featuring the most radical rhetoric I have heard at a Promo-west Productions venue. Opening act Edging skewed more extreme than Lambrini Girls, both in their speech and performance. The group were a wonder to watch, as they felt very present in their performance and seemed to put all their energy into their set.
A double-entendre derived from the landscaping term “edging,” the Chicago six piece band makes saxophone-based queer punk like you have never seen or heard. As Edging’s set began, the venue was only sparsely populated, and spirits were dampened by a heavy rainstorm. The group did much of Lambrini Girls’ heavy lifting by electrifying the lackluster crowd and readying them for the main act to come. Edging was the kind of experimental, down-to-Earth act I am accustomed to seeing at venues like Dirty Dungarees, but I was happy to see them on such a big stage, and I would be even happier to see them again
I very rarely get the opportunity to experience live British punk shows, so it was a pleasure to see Lambrini Girls carry on their (hated) homeland’s tradition. Simultaneously charming and poignant, British continues to be the genre’s epitome. In their song “God’s Country” Lunny skewers her government with my favorite lyrical pun of 2025: “Great Britain… are you sure?”
Despite not being US natives, Lambrini Girls were remarkably passionate about American political and legal issues, such as the increased presence of ICE in major cities, increased threat to queer safety and wellbeing, the lack of repercussions for police brutality against minorities, and US aid to Israel rather than Palestine, particularly during the second Trump Administration.
However, there were times during their set where Lambrini Girls were trying so hard to ‘be punk’ that they might have missed the point. Moments that could have been raw instead felt forced. Lunny stopped the show so many times to coordinate moshes and chants that it felt more like an anarchist gym class than a concert at points. Even many of the song titles seem to be banking off young millennial to old Gen Z slang, and the overall feeling of this band is medium-tame contrived chaos.
Nevertheless, concertgoers seem drawn to the queer leftist community and visibility that Lambrini Girls do an excellent job providing. In the show-opener “Help Me I’m Gay,” written by Lunny as a coming out song to her mother, she formed a queer-only mosh pit, and invited participants to proclaim their pride. The most powerful moment of the show for me came prior to “Boys in the Band,” when Lunny gave the crowd an opportunity to out sexual predators and assailants, both in the narrower music scene and broader community.
While this concert leaned much more into messaging than the average show, there were some musical highpoints. “Company Culture” features strong, forward cadence and the kind of distressed, angular guitar that I would expect from a cold, cutting British punk classic. In addition, show-closer “Cuntology 101” is a class I would enroll in: while distinctly more electronic and poppy than the others, this song exemplifies Lunny’s tongue-in-cheek lyrical style.
As musicians and performers, Lambrini Girls do a splendid job of addressing pressing issues, managing to balance the heavy with the fun and cheeky. While her bandmates were women of few words, Lunny especially struck me as well-informed and a natural leader—it might not be a bad idea for her to think about getting more involved in public policy. Until then, even without titles Lambrini Girls are role models in informal community leadership, and I hope to see them back in Columbus soon.
SETLIST
- Help Me I’m Gay
- Crag David
- Big Dick Energy
- Boys in the Band
- Mr Lovebomb
- Lads Lads Lads
- God’s Country
- Filthy Rich Nepo Baby
- Company Culture
- Bad Apple
- No Homo
- Cuntology 101
Photo Credits: Cora Hernandez
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