228. Wunderhorse
Alexandra Palace
26 May 2025
There are gigs that tick a box, gigs that are like little life milestones and then there are the ones you remember forever. This was one of those. Like my daughter before him, this was my son’s maiden voyage into live music. Not just any gig: Wunderhorse. HIS band.
His early listening habits seemed to comprise mostly hip-hop. However, interestingly, it was not the mindless thug-culture type that seems to dominate teenage groupthink these days, but artists who pushed the genre. The likes of Kendrick Lamaar and D’Angelo; music that bled with poetry and purpose. I remember a road trip to Cornwall when he was passionately trying to explain to his mum about the virtues of To Pimp a Butterfly. The way he talked about it, I knew he’d already found the thing that matters most in music: emotional connection.
It was a good start. Somewhere in this mix, he started to drift towards guitars, the gateway drug was Oasis and before long, the house was echoing with Liam’s nasal swagger. Then came the flood: Led Zeppelin, The Stones, Pink Floyd, all the greats. From there, it was only a matter of time before he discovered the modern inheritors of that lineage, like Fontaines D.C. and, of course, Wunderhorse.
Soon he was taking himself off to my music room, the Voodoo Lounge, to spin vinyl, his musical DNA shifting decisively into rock. He had his first favourite new band. And now, his first gig. I was overjoyed. For me, it was déjà vu of the best kind. I’d had this privilege once before with my daughter, taking her to see Gang of Youths, another first, another flicker of something pure. To get that same moment again with him felt like a circle completing itself.
I’ve often written at length about my disdain for Alexandra Palace, that vast North London fortress of acoustic purgatory, refried food courts, over-bearing security and logistical dystopia. But even that couldn’t spoil the moment. We found a cracking little Italian nearby, carb-loaded like marathon runners, and set off for my most hated venue.
The support act was... well, “challenging.” Their frontman strutted about like he was god’s gift to rock ’n’ roll and was determined to make sure everyone else agreed. The songs didn’t quite keep up with his self-regard. But nobody cared. We were all waiting for the main event.
When Jacob Slater and his band took the stage, everything changed. From the first riff of “Midas”, the entire place detonated. The sound was colossal, all fuzzed-out edges and primal release. I turned to my son and saw his face had lit up like he’d just been plugged into the mains. This was it. His world now: loud, raw, alive, and entirely his.
Wunderhorse are one of those bands that make you believe guitar music might still have a few tricks left. Slater prowled the stage like a man with something to prove, snarling one minute, crooning the next. “Purple” was enormous, all crashing drums and bruised beauty; “Leader of the Pack” hit like a haymaker; “Girl Behind The Glass” shimmered with brooding, cinematic melancholy and “Teal” made the air molecules vibrate.
They’ve got that rare thing: authenticity. There’s no artifice with them. No irony, no posing. You can draw a line straight from The Clash to this lot: that same literate urgency, that same refusal to fake it.
The crowd was incandescent, a heaving sea of believers shouting every word like scripture. I watched my son too, lost in it, and felt that swell of happiness, the moment your kid gets it.
The band closed with “July”, a towering punk-lit, doom-laden colossus of a song and the room stayed lit in that weird post-gig glow and for a moment nobody dared to move. Wunderhorse aren’t just another hyped-up guitar band, they’re the real deal. Jacob Slater has the soul of a poet, the voice of a rockstar, and the look of a man who hasn’t slept properly since 2019.
His first gig set the bar terrifyingly high. And as we spilled out into the cold night, both of us grinning, ears ringing, I realised something: for all the gigs I’ve been to, all the years of chasing music, nothing quite matches the joy of watching your kid fall in love with live music for the first time. That was his best night. But it might just be one of mine, too.