It’s December. 2025’s rollout of gigs is reaching its last few spins, and we’re long sick of, mid-headliner, hot and jostled, being burdened with the coats and scarves we’ve bundled into the venues with. It’s dark when you finish work, it’s dark when you’re travelling and it’s most certainly dark when you get to the queue. But the all-wrapping darkness of winter, the heavy-holding night, the black and sparkling cold – it all sets a perfect atmosphere for Bria Salmena’s set tonight at Brixton’s Windmill.
She’s mid-arena tour, supporting the same UK Wolf Alice gigs as Sunflower Bean. Having those two acts as stage fellows tells you much about Salmena’s sound already; a first-time listener could expect intensity, brooding, magic (and they’d be correct). She once fronted the band FRIGS and, to name-drop some more, is former backing musician/vocalist for Orville Peck.
Salmena takes to the Windmill’s small and glitter-backed stage in plaid patchworked denim and a quiet sheen of self-assuredness. The self-assuredness she wears rightfully and the glitter she is dappled by. Her voice is low, with a celestial gravitas that anchors the rippling synths, guitar and drums to it in independent orbit. Salmena appears, when performing, to have the same kind of potential for destruction as a central fiery sun – her slow prowling movement and almost growl of a voice as threatening as it is hypnotic. The sound that Salmena and her two bandmates conjure is impressively vast, blowing back and back and back the walls in this corner of a room into space. We may as well be in the O2 arena she was performing in 24 hours ago.
Songs from her new, debut LP, Big Dog, deftly fold introspection and confessionalism into sweeping lyrics about dreams, flying, faith, and big dead dogs. With the line “you contain memories I’d like to consume” and the graceful strength of her performance, Salmena embodies both the animal and the god. The music is earthly and unearthly, with moments of both grounded sensitivity and detachment that soars away from that ground to look at an existential, aeroplane-high picture. Salmena’s music, here, is a sonic reflection of this winter’s night –bracing, expansive, and this time, welcomely dark.
