Sienna Spiro live in London: Prodigious singer stuns on home turf
At her North London homecoming, Sienna Spiro proves to be a star worth waiting for...
By Bea Isaacson
“I’m so excited to be here tonight,” Sienna Spiro declares to her London audience. “It’s a hometown show.” Boasting both erudite bravado and unashamed vulnerability, Spiro is the definitive North London girl.
Standing atop the raised Roundhouse stage, Spiro – clad in a sparkling ‘60s mini dress and go-go boots – has risen rapidly. The 20-year-old has featured on the Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack; she’s gone viral with several hits; she’s received acclaim from Elton John. She’s also commander of a fanbase that, tonight gathered in Camden, love her not like an idol, but a sister in crime, a chronicler of love gone awry.
The crowd is a mix of cool girls and it boys, chewing gum and sneaking covert hits of vape. Despite Spiro’s 60s aesthetics, which fuses the Ronettes with early Lana Del Rey via Priscilla Presley, her low-rise slinging audience is thoroughly 2026. They’re not bothered that Spiro is fifteen minutes late.
But they are thrilled when she comes on. Big cheers, delighted squeals, cameras out and up. Spiro opens with singalong ballad ‘The Visitor’. Her voice is sultry, with the smallest jagged touch to its otherwise perfect smoothness giving Spiro a thrilling sonic edge.
The set bursts into life with her following song, the Devil Wears Prada 2 hit ‘Material Lover’, that sees both songstress and audience boogie. Heads nod, arms wave, some jump. Performing with a band, Spiro’s soulful material neatly places her neo-jazz, old-school R&B sound somewhere between a smokier Adele, a sultrier Olivia Dean, and – of course – Amy Winehouse. With the beehive to boot.
This is most apparent during Spiro’s performance of ‘MAYBE’, a ballad performed with a backing chorus of the Roundhouse’s 3,000. The girls belt it back, turning to each other, united in experiences of love that Spiro clearly soundtracks. The bridge prompts the closest thing I’ve seen to an all-woman mosh pit. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Spiro is leading them in the fiery charge.
A cover of Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ is especially popular. It’s when Spiro starts half rapping during a portion of the song that it occurs to me she isn’t just a soul star, she’s a noughties nostalgia girl too. There’s a bit of Lily Allen and Duffy swag there.
Electrifying guitar play in the bridge of ‘Taxi Driver’, turns into a display of band prowess after the song ends. They’re excellent – and it gives Spiro space to lean into something beyond just sultry singer, but a proud bandmate, a position she’s thoroughly comfortable in. “This is Eddie,” she says of her pianist, Eddie Lopes. “We’ve been mates since we were 16, playing across the road at Camden Assembly.” It’s a far cry from that tiny room across the road, but this is North London’s girl, a local legend in the making, right back home.