REVIEW | OCTOBER LONDON LEAVES AUDIENCES IN AWE AT HIS FIRST SOLO UK TOUR

Review: Octo­ber Lon­don @ O2 Shep­herds Bush Empire Sunday 26/1/25 

When you hear a voice as refresh­ingly divine and impec­cable as Octo­ber Lon­don’s, you real­ise that what the world needs now — long over­due — is def­in­itely anoth­er love song! (Sorry, Bleek Gilliam!)

Pic­ture this: the band rolls the drums, elev­at­ing the music­al vibra­tions as the crowd anti­cip­ates the main man… His birth month as his name­sake, the oth­er half plucked from an image of a night sky­line of this city. Octo­ber Lon­don enters the stage, look­ing effort­lessly fresh in a dark suit, white open-collared shirt (with cuff­links), and the shi­ni­est shoes. Add a pair of shades and a glass of dark liquor (October’s Bour­bon, per­haps?) perched beside his mic—it all equates to a smooth jazz-club swoon­ster vibe. Yet, Mr Lon­don car­ries him­self humbly and taste­fully so, simply doing his thing—seemingly effortlessly.

He starts the show to a room full of cheers from a beau­ti­fully diverse audi­ence — after all, we’re in London!

His per­form­ance was clean—nothing extra, noth­ing unne­ces­sary. He was just… so. From his vel­vety voice to the grate­ful, aud­ible response of the audi­ence, it was clear he had many fans in the room. And if they weren’t before, they cer­tainly must have left impressed! The crowd played along, hap­pily respond­ing to his call-and-response:
“Do you have your pass­port? Do you have your visa? Do you want to come with Octo­ber to America…?”

Octo­ber Lon­don has his own sound — diverse and ver­sat­ile. His vocals often echo Mar­vin Gaye, as his album The Rebirth of Mar­vin suggests.

At times, you can also hear sprinkles of Silk Son­ic, espe­cially when he sang “3rd Shift.” Octo­ber could cer­tainly hold his own along­side Bruno and Anderson—and in fact, he already has, col­lab­or­at­ing on “From Here.”

He shares that he expresses him­self through many genres: Coun­try, Pop, Reg­gaetón, Jazz… and tonight, he delivered a vari­ety of songs. I would have loved to hear more (#greedy!) Lover’s Inter­lude, Back to Your Place, 3rd Shift, She Keeps Call­ing, Mul­hol­land Drive, Kill Shot (a smooth altern­at­ive to Nas’ Made You Look, in my opin­ion) — amongst others.

Between songs, he shared insight into his jour­ney, how the world was once about to gain a new truck driver before fate inter­vened, and we unknow­ingly almost missed out on October’s soul-sat­is­fy­ing sound. But the uni­verse had oth­er plans.

Thanks to a fate­ful meet­ing with Jazze Pha (T.I., Ciara), October’s track “Col­orblind” made its way to Snoop Dogg — and that was his sign on the dot­ted line moment.

He told us how he com­pleted The Rebirth of Mar­vin in just one week. And whenev­er doubt crept in, Snoop, in between puffs, reas­sured him:
“Don’t worry about it, nephew…”

October’s advice? If you feel it, go for it. Keep going until you can­’t stop.

The band, except for the gui­tar­ist, was UK-based and made a superb effort learn­ing the music for the tour. A little more chem­istry would have been great, but that’s some­thing that takes time to cement.

We were intro­duced to his gui­tar­ist, RJ from Birm­ing­ham, Alabama—whom Octo­ber [fondly] refers to as an asshole. His right-hand man! Why asshole? Because, as Octo­ber puts it, “When RJ plays a tune, I’m com­pelled to sing.”

That led to a nice impromptu rendi­tion of Usher’s “Nice & Slow”—which the crowd imme­di­ately joined in on, phones out, record­ing en masse. (That does look odd when you’re watch­ing from the upper deck!) It was great to see him flex his vocal range in spon­tan­eous moments—and hon­estly, who doesn’t love a bit of Usher?

Still, I was per­fectly con­tent just hear­ing Octo­ber London’s own tunes!

Later, RJ had his solo moment, strum­ming anoth­er super­charged riff. Octo­ber called for some audi­ence par­ti­cip­a­tion, launch­ing into the Isley Broth­ers’ “Foot­steps in the Dark”, then smoothly transitioned for the hip-hop heads, nod­ding to Ice Cube with “Today Was a Good Day.” And indeed, it was!

Seems like there’s some­thing about Indi­ana and its music­al gifts—The Jack­sons, Baby­face, and now, Octo­ber London.

As the show neared its end, Octo­ber expressed his grat­it­ude to the audi­ence before power­fully swoop­ing into “She Keeps Call­ing Me” (my favour­ite!) I just love the way the beat drops after the music­al pause—and when those brass instru­ments come in? Pure magic.

But that wasn’t the end.

We were treated to an encore of “Back to Your Place.” So fine. So Mr Gaye.

With time and exper­i­ence, a little more pizza­zz in his big-stage pres­ence could take him even high­er. But all in all? Octo­ber Lon­don gave us some­thing spe­cial — music­al HOPE.

Walk­ing away into the pour­ing rain (Lon­don again!), I had extra favour­ites ringing in my head:
“3rd Shift” (ah-chic-a-ah-ooh) & “Mul­hol­land Drive”, “I wanna get away from the world…”

Sounds like a magic­al plan.

Try adding them to your playl­ist — tell me you’re not con­ver­ted… and I’ll give you some Q‑tips!

‘Til next time…

The fol­low­ing two tabs change con­tent below.
Sally Mur­row aka Sal­freckles is a Lon­don­er who works in early edu­ca­tion, she has a back­ground in graph­ic design and finds inspir­a­tion for her art from hip hop rhymes and culture.

About Salfreckles

Sally Murrow aka Salfreckles is a Londoner who works in early education, she has a background in graphic design and finds inspiration for her art from hip hop rhymes and culture.