The Magic Lantern
@ Dalston Eastern Curve Garden
9 September 2025
A summer’s evening on the precipice of autumn bathed in gentle hues by a singular singer-songwriter.
Jamie Doe, alias the Magic Lantern, uses songwriting as a tool to figure out what he thinks about the world, or so he tells us tonight. In performing those songs, therefore, he permits us a glimpse into his mind. As summer’s dying embers glow in Dalston, we are treated to a suite of songs from his most recent two albums, To Everything A Season and A Reckoning Bell. Backed by a band who understand the sensitivities of the music, Doe embodies an extraordinary tenderness and clarity.
His soft-spoken delivery is moving, but precise, and carries just the right amount of weight to cut through the noise of the city. The overall sound, beautifully engineered, flows freely into the night sky around us, surrounds us. Gentleness is recast as strength. This is an earnest exploration of the complex human condition, without falsifying or embellishing for effect.
Reflecting on ‘Loops’, he tells the story of his three-week-old daughter meeting his father towards the very end of his life as he succumbs to Alzheimer’s, much as Doe himself met his father’s father at three weeks old. Between the bass drum and the sizzle, he breathes life into words that seem like they shouldn’t flow but do, like “the threads of a helix in a genome”, a filigree filament of verse capturing four generations and beyond. It works because he contrasts it with the starkness of lines like “when he died / he was all alone”, itself softened in turn by rich harmonies and his kind falsetto.
That’s not to say it’s all muted melancholy — there’s genuine joy and wonder, and the jazz musicians who make up the band are able to hone an edge into the rhythmic and harmonic structure of the music. Pianist Matt Robinson exercises himself on a number of sharp solos, and the two-man horn section of trombonist Kieran McLeod and Matt Anderson on tenor and soprano saxophones project warmth and three-dimensionality into the sound. Rounding out the rhythm section are drummer Dave Hamblett, whose subtle inflections underpin proceedings, and producer Chris Hyson on understated but no-less-vital bass.
Props must also go to organisers Woodburner Music and venue the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, which provides a welcome respite from a Tube-strike stricken London. Opening act James Riley aptly describes it as an oasis in the big smoke as he takes us on a journey from his Tottenham rooftop to a sinking ship in Dungeness and on to NYC and Nashville.
Fittingly, album-closer ‘Joy is a Choice’ is the final song of Jamie Doe's set before a standing ovation prompts an encore of 'Holding Hands', an older favourite which starts quiet before building into a catharsis of groove. The Magic Lantern illuminates the night and awakens our hearts. He pours into them a collection of feelings he has felt, then gives us space to feel our own.
