Photo by Haydn Gwyn
Kitchen Lover is the Brighton punk-garage outfit that is harnessing something in their audience that is hard to ignore. A wave of momentum has propelled them through 2025, performing over 50 shows this year and selling out a number of them. Now they return with their debut full-length, The Circus Sideshow Dream.
The sound of Kitchen Lover is a distorted, intense and frenzied film over 50s aesthetics. It’s a very authentic, fuzzy punk, but feels like a performance in every word, capturing the rhythm as well as the riot. As if they needed proof of their trajectory, this eleven-track provides it with no short change. Start to finish, it’s a well-practised performance with every ounce of spontaneity and rawness.
In their own words… “The Circus Sideshow Dream is a collection of crooked tales from the crippling circus most of us ‘artists’ are operating in. One minute you’re Jim Morrison at the Hollywood Bowl in ’68, breathing in the roar of 20,000 screaming fans. The next, you’re Ray Heffernan in some dim Irish pub, trying to convince yourself—and anyone who’ll listen—that you’ve written a half-decent song, wondering if drinking yourself to death might be the only encore. It’s a reflection on the brutal highs and lows, the madness we willingly walk into—for the love of art, expression, and that ever-fleeting sense of validation.”
Tastemaker backing is coming from left, right and centre, but it’s the feverish intensity of Kitchen Lover’s fans that is cementing their new place at the top of a punk list of ones to watch.
Check it out!
