Review: Zak Abel At KOKO, London

Last night we spent our evening with the ultimate babe Zak Abel at KOKO London and loved every second. Zak’s epic new album Only When We’re Naked came out on the 6th October in the middle of his European tour, which gave the fans attending his London show the chance to have a good listen before we saw him.

Mullally, Zak’s support act, kicked off the show with his track ‘Wonderful’ and was surprised to find he had LOTS of fans in the audience who knew plenty of the words.

Zak kicked off his show with ‘All I Ever Do Is Say Goodbye’ and told us that he is honoured to be playing the venue after attempting to attend a Bonobo gig at KOKO when he was 17 and not being allowed in! He said ‘it’s really nice to finally be allowed into the club!’ - and better yet performing on the stage to thousands of people.

We absolutely loved when a few people from the crowd interrupted Zak as he was in the middle of introducing his track ‘Awakening’ and requested that he sang ‘Flow’, sure enough he stopped to play it when it wasn’t even on the set list. He said casually ‘we haven’t rehearsed that one so we’re gonna do it acoustic is that ok?’, he dived right in and blew us away!

One thing that made the show extra special was him showing us his guitar and keyboard skills, both things he said he doesn’t usually do. He played guitar during his BEAUT cover of Childish Gambino ‘Redbone’ where he brought Sinead Harnett on to share the stage with him!

He started ‘Deserve To Be Loved’ alone playing the keyboard and the crowd was silenced by how stunning it was - even more so because he has previously explained that this is one of his favourite songs he has ever written. He explained that he went through a stage of believing that he ‘didn’t deserve to be loved but when he wrote this he realised he was wrong and that everyone deserves to be loved no matter what they look like, what religion they may be etc’ and we TOTALLY agree!

Zak is such a loving and lovable guy, he made the whole crowd stop and give the person next to them hug in the middle of ‘Everybody Needs Love’ (shame we couldn’t get on stage for a cheeky hug from the man himself) he also climbed off the stage and spent some time singing to the front few rows which probably made their night/life - respect Mr Abel!

We loved Zak’s energy on stage, he didn’t stop dancing the whole time - he was giving us some serious hip action and we couldn’t get enough. He was clearly enjoying himself just as much as we were and that made us VERY happy! We can safely say we are totes in love with the album and we hope he has had the BEST time touring Europe.

Set List

All I Ever Do is Say Goodbye
These are the Days
Say Sumthin
Alchemy
Soul Child
Flow
Awakening
Broken
Make You Love Me
Beautiful Escape
Childish Gambino - Redbone cover
Everybody Needs Love
Still Want UUU
Only When We’re Naked

Encore
Beautiful Life
Unstable

By Joanna Hamer