We can’t believe that it has been a year already since the last Edinburgh Psych Fest, how time flies! We still have great memories of bands such as NewDad, HotWax and La Luz playing blinding sets last year. The 2025 edition is now on the horizon with 31st August being the date to imprint on the mind, it should be a busy one with it also being the last day of the Edinburgh International Festival. This will be the events third edition and the sister of Manchester Psych Fest and Brighton Psych Fest is continuing to get bigger year on year.
Nadine Shah has proven over the past few years how good a musician she is with a Mercury Prize nomination in 2017 as well as five albums, the most recent being 2024’s Filthy Underneath. The Live In London album was only released on 20th June and is a solid effort with seventeen songs on the release. Nadine Shah spent some time fighting personal battles between album number four Kitchen Sink in 2020 and the aforementioned Filthy Underneath that deals with some dark moments experienced. Nadine has the most incredible vocal range and is an artist we will be seeing for the first time in Edinburgh. We are so looking forward to what should be a packed house at Queen’s Hall. We are especially looking forward to hearing Ville Morose, Fool and Evil live.
We first came across Heartworms at the 2024 TRNSMT Festival in Glasgow playing down at the River Stage and the captivating performance made us immediate fans. A year down the line they have now released debut album Glutton For Punishment and are not long off the back of a successful UK tour which we were unable to attend, this has made their performance at Edinburgh Psych Fest even more juicy for us. Jojo Orme is the brains behind the project that she took on after studying production and performance at College, eventually teaming up with producer Dan Carey and playing with a full band. The style of music has been described as post-punk, gothic-rock and dance-punk, we think Jojo’s music fits well into all three categories. This will be one of the highlights of the festival for us, so we would love to see them play a longer set.
Honeyglaze are a band we haven’t had the chance to see yet so we are really looking forward to their performance on 31st August, with two albums behind them already they have a decent back catalogue to choose from. Honeyglaze began as the project of Anouska Sokolow (vocals & guitar) before inviting Tim Curtis (bass) and Yuri Shibuichi (drums) to join the band. The self-titled 2022 debut album was followed by Real Deal in 2024 so they have more than enough songs out there to make this a brilliant and varied set. There have been some comparisons to Mercury Prize 2024 winners English teacher in their style of alternative indie-rock music and we totally agree with that.
Edinburgh’s Swiss Portrait are a band that we have been following for a few years now and have so far seen live three times. During the pandemic artist Michael Kay Terence began experimenting with music at home and he now proudly sits on three album releases – Familiar Patterns (2021), The Crippling Pain Of Happiness (2023) and Someday (2024) – Queen’s Hall would be the perfect venue for them to showcase their music to a larger audience but wherever they end up playing they are well worth checking out. Joining Michael are his band Paul Leslie (guitar), James Killin (bass) and Rohan Bumbra (drums). Swiss Portrait in July released a duo of tracks; Park Safety and Connection Issues which we hope to hear live.
There is a packed line-up performing alongside the artists showcased here. Notable mentions also go to Anna Erhard, Bikini Body, Deary, Du Blonde, George Clanton and The Moonlandingz who we’ll be catching on the day alongside finding out more about the other great artists on the bill.
Written by: Alan Brown
Check out the Edinburgh Psych Fest line-up in full below!
Tickets and further information can be found at the official website.
You can read all about our time at 2024 Edinburgh Psych Fest here.
