THREE FLAGS AND A FALLING CYMBAL: DYLAN WILSON BRINGS THE GOTH AND THE FUN TO HOME BAR

LIVE REVIEW | DYLAN WILSON w/ Charlie Otter & Flame | HOME BAR, EDINBURGH | 18th June 2026 by Bryden Churchmichael

There were three flags on the wall behind the stage. Palestine, the band’s own DYLAN WILSON banner, and the Pride flag. You walk into a room like that and you already know what kind of night you’re in for.

Home Bar on Home Street. 7pm doors. A fiver in, and every penny of it going to Crew 2000, who had a stand set up by the door handing out harm reduction leaflets, lollipops, condoms, keyrings. The lot. Edinburgh’s longest running drugs and harm reduction charity, sat in the room all night. Hold that thought, because it comes back.

I got there early and helped put the backdrop up. Dylan’s flags, the tarot banner with The Moon on it. That’s the thing about Home Bar, and about this whole bit of the Edinburgh scene. It’s not them and us. It’s everyone in the same room moving the same gear.

Charlie Otter opened. And here’s the thing you need to know first: she’d had a concussion before the show. Turned up anyway. Played stripped back acoustic, just her and the songs, and the room went quiet for it in the way rooms only do when something’s actually worth shutting up for. She did a dodie cover I can’t place, and I’m not going to pretend I can, but it was the kind of cover that makes you want to go find the original. The room was hers the whole way.

Then Flame, who I’ve now seen twice and would happily make it three. Fiammetta Nisio, who performs as Flame, hit a vocal range that would have stopped me dead if this was the first time, and it wasn’t, so instead I just watched the room clock it. Ciaran McKinven on guitar is the real thing, the kind of player the rest of a band ends up building around, and James Campbell, Francis Brewitt and James Veitch are no passengers either. We’ve had them in our pages before, we put them on our own showcase. Live, they keep proving why. You can check out our interview with them here.

And then Dylan Wilson.

Dylan came on in a shirt covered in badges, Support The Strike, Black Trans Lives Matter, and split the set clean down the middle. “That was kind of the goth half, folks,” he said at the turn. “This is the fun half. Hope you have a good time, folks.”

They’ve got their own version out on Spotify, produced by James Allen, who you might remember as the producer and bandmember behind Jasmin Jet. Controversially I’d say their take edges the original. Cancel me.

Then later, Ruby Says. Before that one Dylan talked about being young and around drug users, the messy stuff you get pulled into at that age. He didn’t word it perfectly and I’m not going to put words in his mouth. But Ruby Says starts as a soft ballad and turns into something grungy and big, and sat there in a room with the Crew stand by the door, the Velvets cover still hanging in the air, it landed harder than it would anywhere else. Nobody had to say the connection out loud. It was just in the room.

Then the fun half, and the fun half was a lot.

Sean on drums, in a Spurs jersey, number 20, spent half the night with his cymbal trying to escape. It kept falling off. This is grassroots music. It doesn’t always go to plan, and the falling cymbal is exactly why you turn up. “I think Sean’s been putting up with an awful lot, so I think he deserves a big hand, folks, on the drum.” Then, completely out of nowhere: “Any WWE fans in the crowd? Me and Sean watched it and we were holding hands by the time the Undertaker came out. Beautiful scenes.”

The covers were where it tipped over. “We’d like to do another cover for you, folks. This is a more recent one. This is our favourite modern songwriter, actually one of the most sensitive young men working in Britain today.” A beat, and then somebody in the crowd, with total conviction: “Motherfuckin’ Jim. E. Brown.” And they were off into I’m About to Fall Over in Asda, the whole room going “in Asda, in Asda, I’m about to fall over, in Asda” like it was a terrace chant. One of the funniest things I’ve watched a band pull off live. They did I Fought the Law too, because of course they did.

Then Vibin’ Like a Frog. The crowd doing the OH YEAH OH YEAH back at them, Fiammetta from Flame pulled up to vibe like a frog, everyone in on it.

That’s what Home Bar does. A charity gig that’s actually a charity gig. A song about scoring and a song about a girl named Ruby, played in a room handing out the leaflets that keep people like the ones in those songs alive. A cymbal that won’t stay on. A song about falling over in Asda. And a room full of people who’d help you carry an amp at the end of the night. It ran past the gig into a jam that went til 1am, and I’m still working out how a night holds Ruby Says and the Asda song in the same hour without coming apart at the seams. It didn’t come apart. The two things were never as far from each other as they looked.

You can check out their brand new single here.