One of the city's great hidden treasures, the Brussels music scene hosts some of the biggest and best up-and-coming artists and bands in the international, European and Belgian scene.
Every month, Europe's capital has no shortage of thrilling concerts – and picking out the best gigs can be tough. This is why we have put together a monthly guide to discover the best live acts in the city, perfect for new and old Brusseleirs alike.
Carefully selected by music journalist Simon Taylor, here are The Brussels Times' choices for the concerts and gigs that you and your friends should not miss throughout September 2024.
Best gigs this month:
Saturday 7 September
Earl Sweatshirt
Ancienne Belgique
Beyond his playful sartorial stage name, Earl Sweatshirt continues to be one of the most consistent rappers in the game after bursting onto the scene in the early 2010s. Thanks to his ability to elegantly interweave his personal history with introspective and evocative wordplay, the rapper’s laidback flow has earned him a loyal following among alternative rap fans. The son of a South African political poet, Earl was sent to a rehabilitative boarding school in Samoa as a teenager, before reaching notoriety as a member of rap collective Odd Future, which included Tyler, The Creator, and Frank Ocean.
Earl Sweatshirt
When he vanished from the public eye, fans launched a search to discover his whereabouts. They didn’t have to wait long, though, as he returned in 2013 with his magnum opus Doris, the first of many outstanding albums by the rapper. His most recent work, Voir Dire, is a collaborative project with renowned hip-hop producer The Alchemist. Fans attending Earl Sweatshirt's concert in Brussels can expect to hear tracks from this latest LP.
Friday 13 September
King Hannah
AB Club, Ancienne Belgique (sold out)
King Hannah sound like they come from a small town in Mississippi. There’s a swampy element to their sound, heavy on reverb. In fact, they are a duo from Liverpool. That must be the sound of the Mersey then. Their music will appeal to fans of The Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star, a melancholic dream pop. Doom pop, anyone? Their first album, I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me, had some great tracks including the moody All Being Fire.
King Hannah. Credit Josephine Leddet
On first listening, I have been less impressed on their latest offering, Big Swimmer, which they are obviously touring to promote. But it may grow on me. Let’s see how the new songs come across live. They’re playing upstairs at Ancienne Belgique, in the club, which is a great setting for them. Oh, almost forgot. Don’t confuse them with Hannah King, the New Zealand rugby player. I hope the crowd won’t be full of All-Blacks-jersey wearers because they will only be disappointed.
Saturday 14 September
Lankum
Ancienne Belgique
Yet another band for whom the word "doomy" springs to mind. Irish folk music was always far from jolly, with songs about being far from home and missing family and the old country. But Lankum, a group of some of the best young "trad" musicians, have added in the rich vein of folk music’s murder songs to the repertoire and come up with a sound to match. Lee Fisher in Narc magazine said their music was like listening to "Planxty in a k-hole", a reference to a) one of the all-time great Irish folk bands, and b) the effects of taking ketamine.
Lankum. Credit: Ellius Grace
In their hands, the Irish-folk standard The Wild Rover loses all its sense of irresponsible revelry and becomes a dark, nihilistic evocation of a life wasted in self-indulgence and addiction. Should be quite the singalong live. The band were a surprise nomination for the music industry’s Mercury Prize in 2023. They also pride themselves on using odd instruments to create sounds not normally heard on Irish folk albums. Expect an intense gig with lots of shout-outs for Palestine, as the band has been a major supporter of the Palestinian cause.
Saturday 14 September
Tom Skinner
Flagey
Tom Skinner. Credit: Worldwide FM
Skinner has the go-to drummer for some of the most exciting musical projects over the last five years. He is part of The Smile with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and was one of the two drummers in Shabaka Hutching’s mighty Sons of Kemet. At Flagey, Tom will be presenting his solo work Voices of Bishara, which came out in 2022. It’s a piece of spiritual jazz, played at high intensity from the outset.
Sunday 15 September
The Pretenders
Cirque Royale
The Pretenders had their first hit in 1979 and are still delivering live, 45 years later (yikes!). That’s due to their amazing roster of classic songs including Brass in Pocket, Stop Your Sobbing, Back on the Chain Gang, and many more. The Pretenders emerged at the tail end of punk and, while lead singer Chrissie Hynde was a part of the Kings Road punk crowd, working for a while at Malcolm McLaren and Viviane Westwood’s shop, Sex, the band were more new wave than punk.
Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. Credit: Ki Price
Hynde wrote great pop songs in the classic mode and her and her band members could play their instruments. I don’t usually mention a musician’s age but Hynde is 72 and respect is due to her that she’s prepared to go out on the road and give it her all. Rock and roll never dies.
Tuesday 17 September
Jane Weaver
Botanique, Witloof Bar
After writing above that I never mention a musician’s age, I have to break my rule again and say that Weaver has passed the half-century mark. She has been a mainstay of north-west England’s indie pop scene, having worked with The Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, David Holmes and Can singer, Malcolm Mooney. She released her first solo album, Like an Aspen Leaf, in 2002 and her latest offering, Love in Constant Spectacle, is her 16th.
Jane Weaver. Credit: Andy Votel
Over the course of those records, she has ranged from pysch folk to folktronica but always with great songs and melodies. Whatever Weaver does always has to have the suffix "-pop" attached. Her big success came in 2021 with the album Flock which the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis named as his album of the week. Check out Solarised. She’s playing in Botanique’s tiny Witloof Bar which seems too small for such a talent but it will allow for an intimate atmosphere.
Tuesday 17 September
Lemon Twigs
Botanique, Orangerie
Lemon Twigs. Credit: Stephanie Pia
The Lemon Twigs are a duo made up of the D’Addario brothers from Long Island. At some point, they discovered the Beatles and the Beach Boys and never got over it. Not that that’s a bad thing because it leads to such great songs like the Teenage-Fanclub-esque, Ghost Run Free, complete with falsetto harmonies and jangly guitar, or Rock On (Over and Over) which sounds like the Beach Boys singing over a Status Quo record. For lovers of well-crafted songs with nice melodies and lots of major seventh chords.
Saturday 21 September
Space Afrika
Bozar
Space Afrika
Manchester’s Space Afrika are appearing as part of Bozar’s 'Club Night' which brings together seven artists from the dance and electronic music world including keyboardist Alfa Mist. Space Afrika’s heavily dub-influenced music evokes rainy nightscapes of their native Manchester much in the same way that Londoner Burial conjures up scenes of his hometown. Maybe I’ve read too much record company blurb, but I hear traces of industrial music in their creations, reaching back to Cabaret Voltaire, Sheffield’s early electronic/music concrete pioneers.
Saturday 26 September
Mary Lattimore
Bozar
Mary Lattimore is a classically trained harpist based in Los Angeles. She has become the go-to studio harpist for musicians such as Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile and Steve Gunn – and has just been recording with cult new-age/ambient musician Laraaji. In parallel, Lattimore has five solo albums to her name.
Mary Lattimore
Her music is a mix of delicate arpeggios augmented by the Line Six DL4 pedal which sits on her lap as she plays, like a pet cat, and which, in her hands, becomes an instrument in its own right. Fun fact: Mary keeps one of her harps in Belgium which is one of the reasons she plays here so often. She will be appearing at Bozar with Kaijin Kaiwa, a duo that plays noise and drone on bass and electric guitar.
Sunday 27 September
Chantal Acda and the Atlantic Drifters
Bozar
Acda is a Belgian-Dutch singer and instrumentalist who has been embraced by top-flight international musicians such as US jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and German post-classical pianist and composer Nils Frahm, both of whom have played on her albums. Her own music and voice is more folky, with a light vibrato that puts one in mind of UK singer June Tabor.
Chantal Acda and the Atlantic Drifters
Some reviewers have compared her mix of jazz and folk to Joni Mitchell. High praise indeed. The instrumentation behind her is gentle and allows her voice to float. She will be playing her last album Silently Held with Belgian musicians rather than the stellar international artists who played on the record.
Monday 30 September
Bodega
Botanique, Museum
The modern music scene is often criticised for being too reliant on recycling old styles and rarely coming up with anything fresh and exciting. Brooklyn indie band have tackled this accusation head on by rerecording a set of songs they wrote eight years ago. The result is Our Brand Could Be Yr Life.
Bodega
Leaving aside the band’s meta approach to making music, which they use to make critical points about consumerism, they write some great tunes. I love their name, which is US slang for small "night shop" – borrowed Spanish and the hispanic neighbourhoods of New York City.
