Nashville sister power duo Larkin Poe headed up The Great Oak stage at this year’s BST Hyde Park. Being the first act of the day supporting Guns N’ Roses is no small feat, but the band stood, hammer to nail, as one of the day’s finest.
Larkin Poe
BST Hyde Park – 30 June 2023
Words: Monty Sewell
Nashville sister power duo Larkin Poe headed up The Great Oak stage at this year’s BST Hyde Park. Being the first act of the day supporting Guns N’ Roses is no small feat, but the band stood, hammer to nail, as one of the day’s finest. 
The sound of Howlin Wolf’s Spoonful blasted out from the twenty-metre-high speakers as the quartet strode onto the stage to the welcoming cheers of a festival audience aching to get their day of rock ‘n’ roll off to a slamming start.
Rebecca and Megan Lovell head up the band, with Rebecca on electric guitar and lead vocals and Megan bringing that full Nashville heat on the slide guitar. 
It’s an electric blues, Americana, hard rocking vibe that, once you hear it, is simply impossible to shake. Strike Gold, Kick The Blues, and Summertime Sunset, taken from their 2022 album Blood Harmony, whip the festival grounds into a wide-eyed whirlwind of delicious guitar licks and onstage thump. 
The sky may be a dodgy looking grey, but with Larkin Poe, it is thirty-five minutes of sunny musical flare as they yank on the cord of excellence and own The Great Oak with ease. A cover of Son House’s Preachin’ Blues dishes out the slide goodness before originals Bad Spell and Wanted Woman.
The band as a whole features some phenomenal strides into main stage possession. But the hook of the show is almost indefinitely the union between Rebecca and Megan as they play off each other in such a way only sisters of a longstanding collaboration could. 
Both roaringly fierce and emotively endearing, they finish up their set with AC/DC and Bolt Cutters and The Family Name.
With masterly guitar moves and vocal harmonies that entice and delight, Larkin Poe are nothing if not frontrunners of the blues rock scene on their way to full enrapture of the industry.
