IVW 2026: Picture Parlour, Imogen and the Knife, and essential chat in the Ivy House smoking area
After 10pm, the smoking area at the Ivy House in South East London has a 12-person capacity.
It becomes one-in, one-out, but luckily, everyone is in. Within a small space, I’m there with Picture Parlour, Jonique, photographers, PR people. All of us are 20-something, all of us love music, all of us are more than at home in a venue like this, and we’re talking… about the confusion and chaos of how something so simple can feel so hard.
There is a lot of stress in making of music despite the fact that there shouldn’t be. No matter how much we love it, this is the least serious thing in the world, as artists are making songs, not saving lives. I’m here writing about those songs. Simultaneously, art is the most low-stakes yet most important thing we have. What is life without it? Where would we find the joy? But at the same time, it’s not like guitar-slingers are doctors.
I don’t say that to belittle the craft, but simply to highlight how utterly ridiculous it is that we have to repeatedly dive into intense and vital conversations about saving the music world, about money, inclusivity, and ways to fix this industry. It is all supposed to be fun, it is purposely built to deliver fun and feeling and excitement to the masses as a necessary part of life – so why am I stood in a smoking area listening to Katherine Parlour, the creator of one of 2025’s finest rock records, talk about how the band, in their most exciting era, are leaving the city, off to find cheaper rent elsewhere?
“Even after signing to a major label, we struggled to meet basic living costs, including rent, which made the demands of touring and writing hard to sustain. We ended up having to give up our tenancy just as we released our debut record,” Parlour recently said, vocal about how something in music is fundamentally broken, but passionate about getting it fixed.
In the smoking area, obviously, we touch on what’s broken. I talk about AI and the various publications asking people to get machines to reword press releases into articles. Jonique talks about the exhaustion of playing gigs and rehearsing around a full-time job. Parlour talks about feeling like that exhaustion is pervasive, about how everyone is too overworked to give the art the time it deserves, while a publicist talks about the machine of it all, and the well-known fact that working-class, low-income artists can’t afford to grapple with it.
But under it all, in the voices frantically talking over each other, and in the way that a 12-person capacity smoking area converges to one shared conversation – there’s the passion to fix it. There’s joy, there’s the sharing of exciting artist names, there are compliments for each other’s work thrown around liberally, there is genuine investment in what each other is doing, and real care. There are offers to collaborate, or even just to get together and play for fun. There are friendships, new and old. There is love and adrenaline – because Picture Parlour only finished bringing the house down ten minutes prior, and in an independent venue, people want to hang around after.
Everyone is at Ivy House for Independent Venue Week for a powerful lineup of Slow Country, Silver Twin, Imogen and the Knife, Lonnie Gunn, and Picture Parlour. Talent readily abounds. Each and every time I see Picture Parlour play, I feel more solid in the belief that Parlour and guitarist Ella Risi will be written into the rock history books. Or watching Imogen and the Knife strip things back to just a piano on the dance floor, with the crowd gathered in a circle around her, I’m reminded that songs with the potential to be timeless are still unfurling from the ether as she tries out new tracks penned only this week, and they’re already golden.
From the stage, Picture Parlour’s bass player, Kitty Fitz, toasts to the venue, talking about growing up in the area and watching the pub and venue withstand so much. It has survived thanks to the dedication of the community, music fans, and local residents. She implores everyone to buy more drinks and come back, delivering the final speech that conveys the key point of Independent Venue Week: a space like this is vital, a space like this is joyous, we must keep it open.
The speeches also echo another message: we wouldn’t be here without this. Imogen continuously states, “This is my bread and butter,” as a beaten-up pub piano with patient listeners is where it began and where she will always feel most at home. For Picture Parlour, who boomed to notoriety just down the road at the Windmill, their entire rise comes down to independent venues taking a chance on them. For me, I’m only here doing this job because of the love found in the Washington in Sheffield, or Westgarth Social Club in Middlesbrough. In the communal chat of the smoking area, everyone could say the same.
The music industry is broken and needs fixing – but the need for independent venues goes beyond the classic arguments as to how and why. In the soft seat of the grassroots space, we’re chatting about the good and the bad. Everybody leaves smiling from that, just as much as the gig. We all wake up with a slight headache but with renewed passion, energy, and appreciation for the importance of culture.
The beat goes on, the art endures, we’ll gather again at some other vital independent hub soon and collapse into the same chat next time everybody needs a boost.
