WARNING: This review contains unfiltered language. Just a heads up!
A gold grand piano sits on a small stage at London’s Piano Smithfield, a cosy live music venue tucked around the corner from Barbican tube station. It’s the kind of listening room intimate enough to feel as if you’ve stumbled upon a secret gig, but atmospheric enough to host a special kind of artist.
The perfect space for Hannah Wicklund, the South Carolinian singer-songwriter who brought her The Living Vault Tour to the late-night piano bar for a solo, stripped back show.
Hannah Wicklund
The blues rock musician has been on the road to celebrate the release of 7-track album The Living Vault, with performances at Handel Hendrix House in London, The Carlisle in Hastings and Ramsgate Music Hall to name a few. Sets have included tracks from her acclaimed discography, as well as currently unreleased material, with London-based rock band Dead Writers setting the tone with a raw acoustic opening.
At Piano Smithfield, Hannah’s show moved through three distinct phases; piano, acoustic guitar and electric guitar, with each one a gear shift. From the moment she glided on stage, settled in at the piano and declared, “Alright, now we’re cooking!”, the room shifted and everything felt magnetic.
Before opening with a note-perfect rendition of The Beatles’ Oh! Darling, she shared with the intimate audience that piano was her first love before the guitar stole her heart. Witness from 2024’s LP The Prize, produced by Greta Van Fleet’s Sam Kiszka, laid bare that her vocals can be both thunderous and crystalline. During On Fire from The Living Vault, they soared.
A natural storyteller between tracks, Hannah is warm and funny and can make a room full of strangers feel like old friends. The Prize, we learned, is a record that means an awful lot to her. “God, I hope I don’t fuck up those lyrics now!” she laughed before providing a glimpse into her songwriting process, reflecting on how we are constantly evolving as humans and how shedding can be a powerful act of renewal. (She didn’t mess up a single word).
Wearing a dress appliquéd with gold, silver and red butterflies that caught the light (the dragonfly of The Prize era now giving way to a new symbolism), Hannah held the crowd in silent awe as she performed Sun to Sun, a track that reinforces that while men may work sun to sun, “a woman’s work is never done.”
There have been hushed whispers of a new record this year, recently validated by Hannah through a series of teaser tracks on her socials, and some new material surfaced mid-set. With The Token, Hannah proves she is a songwriter fully in command of her talent and spotlights the incredible versatility of her lush voice. She can deliver tough and soft; from a tender whisper to a fierce growl, with exquisite vocal control.
Hannah Wicklund
Moving gracefully across the stage (“I’m going to take myself over there and pick up one of those guitars!” she says with a smile), Hannah shares the origins of Meet You Again, from 2018’s self-released debut LP Hannah Wicklund & The Steppin Stones.
Written as a teenager in Georgia, it was inspired by a moment at her friend’s house when, two minutes before leaving, he thought it the perfect time to kiss her. Life drifted them apart; Hannah moved, then went on tour, and during a moment of sadness, she penned the track. When she eventually came back to town, she called the friend and shared it. His response? He kissed her. “I do hope he’s doing well,” she mused, before moving on to the emotionally charged Keep Me Around, a raw blues rock track built on the foundations of a driving, steady guitar.
The Pier, which Hannah described as a “mermaid record“, was an ode to her on-the-road companion “Miss Pip”. Soft and furious in equal measure, Hannah snarls, “I should have left you in the woods“. I believed every word.
The Living Vault is a collection of songs she wrote between the ages of 12 and 17 re-recorded and wrapped up with an unreleased demo version of On Fire. Hannah’s lyrics are deeply personal, and the songs have grown and transformed with her and the world we live in today.
Before launching into a mesmerising version of Versus the Villain, the second track from The Living Vault, she declared, “So many women are stepping up. It’s about time for a matriarchy, and we’re all part of the solution. Let me be clear, though. I love men. That’s my problem!”, drawing laughter from the crowd.
Hannah Wicklund
By the electric guitar section, the tempo had climbed and Hannah had fully arrived. Calling All Good Men, another unreleased track at the time of writing, crackled with soul and was preceded with a rallying cry: “There are great men in my family who didn’t prepare me for the ones in the wild. Start feeding your good wolves. It’s high time men stepped up, and it’s not enough to just feel safe. Women, take up as much space as you want!”
Strawberry Moon and Ghost sounded raw and more rugged live, and Hannah closed with another standout from Hannah Wicklund & The Steppin Stones. Bomb Through The Breeze was a riff-heavy, sonorous finale, and she barely broke a sweat (despite London’s lingering heatwave), before seamlessly weaving in a fragment of Eartha Kitt’s Piece of My Heart.
By the end, the intimate room felt too small to contain Hannah and her talent.
The show was a timely reminder that great live music is not about volume or spectacle, but conviction.
And that women don’t need permission to make themselves heard.
Live review of Hannah Wicklund at Piano Smithfield, London on 26th May 2026 by Nicola Greenbrook. Photography by Pip.
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