FLO Live in London: A compelling homecoming for an ambitious trio
As Flo return to London, they prove why they're one of the most in-demand R&B groups around.
One doesn’t have to look very far to find an abundance of new girl groups in and around the 2025 pop and R&B zeitgeist. The likes of Say Now, 3Quency, ‘Girl Group’, and KATSEYE, are all harvesting fandoms in real-time. FLO are regarded as a quintessential part of this renaissance, helping to usher in a next generation group formula both on home soil and abroad.
Known for their sleek harmonies, on-stage ambition, and sharply charming personalities, Jorja, Renee, and Stella have worked meticulously — both in front of and behind the consumer eye — since 2019, developing their aesthetic, sound, universe and, in the process, made history with their inaugural album AAA (or Access All Areas) as the highest-charting album by a British R&B girl group in 23 years last year. So surely, the rescheduled tour only helped but build anticipation for the trio’s homecoming.
Brixton’s O2 Academy was tender and inviting; heightened security procedures in the wake of the building’s 2024 re-opening didn’t deter FLO-Lifers from contributing to warm beginnings for opener Sekou. As his set deepened his demeanour loosened, onlookers helping the R&B protégé to shed his skin demonstrating seasoned discipline far beyond his 21 years. His hollow, pristine, and humanising baritone register was enough to coat the room in an embrace that pacified the room, engulfing them into his universe as he concluded ‘Better Man’. “I feel like Flo fans are the best” he concluded before jiving across the stage like a Motown titan previewing his upcoming single ‘About Last Night’.
Audiences didn’t have to wait too long before the three-piece, hole in the wall curtain design that’s become synonymous with the AAA tour appeared on stage, its crimson hue — also an in-era staple — signalling FLO’s impending arrival. Poised and nil-a-nerve in their rearview, the ladies glide through their first act, sure to garnish notes of singles like ‘Walk Like This’ into the arrangement of their album set-list. “We couldn’t just come back with the same set,” they tell the audience. After third track ‘Check’, they re-work the songs ending with Ghost Town DJ’s ‘My Boo’, a smart way of introducing a quintessential era of 90’s R&B for the group, as well as house, which the UK has contributed to, and embraced wholeheartedly.
Where FLO did treat their audiences to back-catalogue numbers like 2022’s ‘Immature’, they were sure to showcase development. Reformatting the songs original harmonies, the group showcase their now signature acapellas, which have significantly improved over the years. The girls don’t coyly approach them “seeing what happens”, but enunciate, as if a unified machine now, aware of one another’s tone and vocal design.
Each FLO member is given a chance to shine across their homecoming, AAA premiere in Europe. Renee for example, who, at times felt too in line with the song’s live arrangement, captivates each and every listener on “Losing You” and encore number “I’m Just A Girl”, leading the ladies with diligence and tact. Jorja’s comedic appeal, sometimes adjacent to a cockney skit across the night adds a neighbourly, youthful and slackened appeal, juxtaposed with her near-perfect falsetto and vocal anchoring of the trio across a bulk of the set. Stella adds a grit to the affair, her tact as sharp as her attention to detail. Across ‘I’m Just A Girl’ she finally loosens, struggling — with the help of her ‘sisters’ — to get her hair braids out of their ponytail, she finally shrugs her shoulders, continuing in sequence with a look of catharsis in her demeanour, she can loosen her standards.
At this juncture, FLO continues to place a line in the sand. They set a guardrail for the standard of a contemporary class of girlgroup. Arrangement and sequencing are their quantifiers in the equation following in the lineage of a group like The Marvellettes, or the oft-discussed Destiny’s Child. Still, across that very encore number, you’re left wondering what the group would look like with visible live bands emulating those guitar solos, or with even further and developed choreography as they strut across their number ‘Soft’ — because that’s the compelling component with FLO, they always leave room for more in their ascension, you can always see the heightened potential across their faces and in what they do deliver on the stage. This may be the logical step forward for one of Britain’s brightest R&B bands.