Baba Yaga's Hut Presents:
The Grubby Mitts + Mark Leckey & Kinn
£15 (inc. fees) - New River Studios - 4th April 2025
The Grubby Mitts are a wilfully eclectic nine-piece art-rock ensemble from Bedford, fronted by artist Andy Holden with long-time musical collaborator Roger Illingworth.
Absent for a few years the band return with an expanded line up including a full brass section for the release of a new EP, ‘Valediction’, and ahead of a full album, ‘Love in the Misanthropocene’ later in the year. The band are known for their manifesto ‘Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity’, but the new EP, written in recorded in memory of Holden’s partner, the late Mira Calix, leans now towards the latter, and includes their version of David Lang’s ‘Just (After Song of Songs)’.
In previous incarnations they toured the U.K playing only DIY artist-run spaces and shared a bill with Einstürzende Neubauten at Austria’s Donau Festival, as well as performing live with Damo Suzuki.
Their almost-cult single ‘To a Friend’s House The Way is Never Long’ lingers as a rallying call and the live show continues to surprise with minor theatrics, dance routines, philosophical lyrics, and disruptive toys. The band move from orchestral pop, to classical minimalism, to post-punk, building to a crescendo of cacophonous yelping. “There is hope”, say the band, “but not for us”.
Andy Holden is known for his films and installation such as Natural Selection and Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, and for curating Beano: Art of Breaking the Rules at Somerset House in 2021. The Grubby Mitts live show can be seen as a musical extension of his art, an exhibition in concert form.
