November 2026. Cambridge.
“We’ve really missed your weird music rants, Retired Martin“. Aww, nice of you.
Whenever Tidal recommends an album as good as this year’s eponymous “Wendy Eisenberg” I always go straight to the Dice app to find gig tickets in weird places, and could think of nowhere weirder to see Wendy than back in Cambridge’s New Chesterton Institute.
The NCI started life as suburban reading rooms before transmogrifying into a backstreet social club and alternative folk venue (mainly) of some renown. Cambridge’s Peer Hat, if you like.
For a split second I thought I had a Bass find,
but I think that tease has been there since the NCI’s couple of years in the Beer Guide in ancient times (about 1999).
It’s a classic looking club, similar in feel to the nearby Portland Arms,
with a foamy Adnam’s Bitter (GOOD) and Rudgate on two well-supported hand pumps.
You can take your pint glass into the gig, an all-seated affair as the music is SERIOUS.
If I was being cruel I’d tell you it’s a Black Country New Road pullover crowd, but the young girl sitting next to me is varnishing her nails throughout, which in 2026 is the mark of a hipster gig*.
Wendy fits my musical stereotype, her interview with the Guardian (ugh) reflecting “a revelatory moment that involved me embracing my queerness, my nonbinariness, my lesbianity“.
Brilliant songs, the delivery only slightly dampened by the absence of her violinist partner, a star of her new EP which slows down the lead track to a 37 minute jam (PLAY).
I would love to have known Old Mudgie’s thoughts on this one.
*joke
