Paris Paloma Brings Heart and Magic to London

Singer-songwriter Paris Paloma played to a sold-out crowd at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, performing tracks like “drywall,” “the warmth,” and her new song “the rider.”

REVIEWSLIVE SHOW

6/11/20251 min read

Paris Paloma Brings Heart and Magic to London
Paris Paloma Brings Heart and Magic to London

Friday night at Shepherd’s Bush Empire felt less like a gig and more like stepping into Paris Paloma’s inner world. From the moment she opened with the haunting “my mind (now)”, she had the crowd in the palm of her hand—soft, still, completely tuned in.

Paloma’s voice is a thing of contrast—drifting delicately one second, then rising with unexpected power the next. It never felt showy, though. Everything about her performance was grounded in feeling. There was an honesty to it, not in a performative, “I love you, London!” kind of way, but genuinely. She also accompanied every song with a little explanation on its meaning, on how it came to life. There’s something about it that felt half-dream, half-ritual.

Songs like “drywall” and “the warmth” (my personal favourite) carried emotional weight and had the crowd almost enchanted, and "the rider" (from "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim"), sang to her friends in the room, felt like a quiet gift. Stripped of grandeur, it landed as something deeply personal—tender, melancholic, and full of quiet pride. You could sense how much it meant to her, and the room responded with hushed reverence, as if not to disturb the spell.

By the time Paloma ended with “labour”, the crowd was fully locked in. Voices rose in unison, arms in the air, a kind of quiet catharsis filling the room. And when she walked off to a roar of applause, you could tell no one was quite ready for it to end, so the crowd opened to dance in circles and elongate the night.

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