John Grant – Live Review – St George’s Hall, Bradford
By Hazel Davis, October 2025
“Bradford City of Culture! I came as soon as I heard!”
I’ve never understood not turning up to watch the support act (let alone talking through the support act but that’s a different article entirely). Sometimes, just sometimes (in fact, often) you come away with a new favourite and that’s what happened at John Grant’s spectacular Bradford gig last night.
Lynks arrived on stage (and boy did he), top to toe in red leather, including his (I have now discovered) trademark mask, and proceeded to knock the city’s socks off with his glorious, camp industrial pop. The choreography was tight, the jokes were arch and the beats were banging. A far cry from the earnest singer-songwriter support we’d predicted.
“Any Lynks fans in? Well I bet there’s a few more now, am I right?” he quipped, “At 25, I’m scientifically the most attractive I’ll ever be,” before launching into ‘Use It Or Lose It’, an exhausting ode to being young and hot: “I don’t wanna be on my deathbed, wishin’ I’d got more head”, “I didn’t come here for art, I only came here to dance”, rhyming metatarsal with arsehole, and so on. It was joyful and anarchic and the crowd thought so too (especially when he went down and joined them).
“Rich and velvety”
If Lynks was arch, John Grant was archer, bringing his famous dark humour to a range of tricky subjects, backdropped with banging beats and tight synth. Grant and his band (bass/drums wizard combo man, Icelandic-jumpered guitarist and keyboard player/backing singer) delivered a comprehensive set of hits and lesser-spotted numbers with gusto and Grant flitted from piano to keytar to keyboard and back seamlessly.
This was John Grant’s first headline show in Bradford and the gig was part of Bradford 2025. He suits the festival. The 57-year-old former Czars frontman, who now lives and works in Iceland, has collaborated with everyone from Sinead O’Connor to Robbie Williams and released six solo albums, his latest, The Art Of The Lie, being described by many as his best yet.
As a fan of some of Grant’s lusher, vocal numbers, I surprised myself by enjoying the electro-heavy numbers a lot more. Laid end-to-end Grant’s introspective musings on his love life and upbringing can get a tiny bit tiresome and his eagerness to cram all the words in can occasionally result in his songs coming off as a little bit sixth-form poetry. Moreover – though Grant’s baritone voice is loud, rich and velvety and well suited St George’s Hall, his pitch suffered a few times, spoiling the beauty of some of the more poignant moments.
But that’s enough of that, when John Grant is good he’s brilliant. The audience were united in their love for this eclectic and generous performer and he gave back as much love as he got. ‘GMF’, one of my favourite songs of all time, was a cracking final number and left us wanting more at the end of an already rich show.
images: Andrew Benge
Hazel Davis lives in West Yorkshire and has been a journalist for most of the UK national newspapers and many magazines, cutting her teeth on a classical music magazine. She’s the lead singer in a country band (Mustard County), plays trumpet in a wind band and big band and cornet in a brass band. When she’s not playing music or writing about it, she’s usually thinking about it.
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Shame he wasn’t as good as he usually is. His voice was amazing as always but I have to say, I thought he was below standard. This is the 4th time I’ve seen him and was chuffed he was playing in Bradford. But I thought his bizarre noodling in instrumental sections that were either the wrong notes or just bizarre choices – I kinda felt like his band mates were making up for him messing up his own songs. Lynks was bizarre, funny and strangely entertaining. It was ace. Definitely a fan.