E-Werk, Cologne, Germany26th October 2025
Larkin Poe - “The Bloom Tour UK-EU 2025” - Support: Son Little
One might wonder how sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell manage to be so productive and enthusiastic about touring as LARKIN POE over the years. In 2022, the Roots Rock band released ‘Blood Harmony’, the album for which the sisters won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2024.
This album was already presented on tour in Europe in 2023 - we covered it at the time. In 2024, the band returned to Europe once again, performing mainly at festivals across the country. Finally, in January 2025, LARKIN POE released their latest album, ‘Bloom’, and presented it on an extensive tour in the United States in the spring/ summer, before covering Europe and the UK in the autumn of that year. This is also surprising because Rebecca Lovell became a mother in the summer of 2025, and it cannot be taken for granted that the musician’s life as one half of LARKIN POE will continue practically uninterrupted.
As was the case two years ago, we are privileged to accompany the band to Cologne’s E-Werk. While the television station WDR was present at the club at that time to record LARKIN POE’s concert for the television programme “Rockpalast”, we experience less media presence in the autumn of 2025. Just like two years ago, the E-Werk is nearly sold-out and thus very well attended.
Son Little
Before the Lovell sisters take to the stage, SON LITTLE gets to shine as the support act. It’s curious that this act, behind which songwriter, singer and instrumentalist Aaron Earl Livingstone hides as a solo artist, performs significantly better on the streaming platform Spotify with almost 1.3 million monthly listeners than headliner LARKIN POE.
The artist, who has released several albums over the past 10 years, has added a drummer and keyboard player to his line-up for the tour. Now as a trio, SON LITTLE perform for the next 40 minutes. However, the performance fails to generate much enthusiasm, as the blues and vintage soul they play is simply too relaxed. Very little happens on stage, with Livingstone and his two touring musicians appearing very chilled throughout the set, and that’s exactly how it sounds.
The music isn’t bad at all, it’s just that it doesn’t really fit with the rockier sound of the later headliner.
Setlist
01. O Me O My
02. Whip The Wind
03. Lay Down
04. Mad About You
05. Neve Give Up
06. About Her. Again.
07. The Middle
Larkin Poe
‘Bloom’ is the name of the Lovell sisters’ latest album, and LARKIN POE have taken the opportunity to design the stage accordingly. Flowers in planters are scattered all over the stage. The lighting installation hints at flowers in the lower half. The stage backdrop behind this installation consists of a large screen covered with rows of flowers. A sea of flowers.
So it makes perfect sense that the songs from ‘Bloom’ dominate the evening. And indeed, the songs from the current album make up half of the 16-song set list. Somewhat surprising, however, is that the other half of the set list consists largely of songs from the previous album, ‘Blood Harmony’. As good as the last two albums are... it’s a bit strange that the albums LARKIN POE released between 2010 and 2020 are almost completely ignored.
With ‘Nowhere Fast’, ‘Mocking Bird’ and ‘Easy Love Pt. 1’, LARKIN POE kick off with three songs from their new album and present themselves as enthusiastic as ever. Again and again, the sisters meet during solos or instrumental parts in individual songs, then stand facing each other with smiles on their faces during the performance.
Between songs, it is Rebecca who repeatedly engages with the enthusiastic audience, coming across as extremely likeable. For example, before ‘If God Is A Woman’, she sings the praises of all parents, but especially all mothers. She mentions that her son is also on tour with her and admits that it is, of course, a bit more exhausting to tour with a baby.
Sister Megan always shows her strengths when she starts playing solos on her lap steel guitar. In these moments, she stands at the very front of the stage and passionately devotes herself to her solos. The touring musicians, who form a quintet alongside the sister duo, are also introduced by the frontwoman early on in the evening. Drummer Ben Satterlee, for example, is introduced as a very hard-working drummer from Oklahoma. He is hard-working because, as the father of four sons, he needs to earn good money.
As you would expect from a LARKIN POE concert, the sisters also include an acoustic section in the middle of the set on this tour, during which the five musicians gather at the front of the stage and pay homage to bluegrass before continuing with electric amplification in the second half. After 100 minutes, including the encore ‘Bloom Again’, the concert comes to an end.
Setlist
01. Nowhere Fast
02. Mockingbird
03. Easy Love Pt. 1
04. Summertime Sunset
05. Bluephoria
06. If God is a Woman
07. Deep Stays Down
08. Southern Comfort (Acoustic)
09. Little Bit (Acoustic)
10. Mad as a Hatter (Acoustic)
11. Devil Music (Acoustic)
12. Bad Spell
13. Pearls
14. Wanted Woman - AC/DC
15. Bolt Cutters & The Family Name
16. Bloom Again
All pictures by André Wilms
