1,434 JODY AND THE JERMS, Swindon The Tuppenny, Thursday 12th March 2026

 

An impromptu short-notice shout, this, and another box ticked in my loose 2026 “live” music resolution to get out more locally. Andy had been recommending veteran Oxford indie-poppers Jody and the Jerms to me after he’d snagged a CD copy of their most recent (4^th!) album, 2025’s “Love Descends” (one of the last of 20, apparently!), his copy arriving with a handwritten letter informing him of their forthcoming Tuppenny gig. So when local music scribe and Tuppenny impresario Dave Franklin also “invited” me to that selfsame gig on Facebook, it suddenly filled a gap between last night’s Vaccines gig and tomorrow’s Bunnymen excursion, giving me an early year 3 in 3! So much for retirement slowing me down on the gig front, then…!

So I popped up the Tupp through a light drizzle, hitting the venue just before 8 and running into the aforementioned Mr. Franklin for a long-overdue catch up and some rock chat while the 6-piece band sound checked. Andy arrived just before the appointed start time, so we wandered around just as the band were kicking off set one at 8.30. “We’ll start with a slow one,” announced guitarist Niall Jeger, his wife and lead vocalist Jody then cutting him of with, “…and then [we’ll] go hard!” That’s what she said…! 

So opener “Forever Running” was, as promised, a quieter opener with a melancholy minor chord chorus, with “Just For Show”, next up, a little more upbeat with a late 70’s strutting New Wave pop vibe and “Sensation” a backbeat-driven collision between DIY C86 jangle pop and more robust Darling Buds-esque summery late 80’s indie, accentuated by Jody’s breathy, lilting vocal style. The set material followed in a similar vein, all delivered with careful understatement (it’s a small pub venue after all, you don’t want to blow the doors off) and casual charm, Jody commenting after the slinky, keyboard driven “Started Something”, “I asked my daughter to get me a Bacardi, and she got me my cardigan!”

The Jerms continued in a similar breezy, toe-tapping vein, with a groovier, rockier “Divine” my favourite of this first set, before a slightly incongruous, ska inflected “A Different Place”, apparently the only one in this opening salvo drawn from the new album! Closer “I Don’t Wanna” then saw a brief pause to proceedings, with Dave, Andy and myself enjoying a brief conversation with Jody during the break, the singer promising a few more newer selections for set 2.

True to her word as well: after opening with “Never Coming Home”, apparently their first ever song but a number featuring some melancholy yet uplifting guitars and a nice descending bassline, newies such as the bouncier “Hooch and Happiness” and the Phil Spector-esque 60’s girl group vibe of “Some Day” featured in a much better second set. However the earlier “Harder I Try” (which Jody announced as her favourite) stood out for me with some resonant Bunnymen-like textural guitar riffery from the returning Pete Millson, and a later “Counting Dreams” was as Smiths-esque as Jody had warned in her intro, with some undulating Marr-like fretwork. A herky jerky closer in “Not In This World” rounded out an overall understated yet beguilingly melodic performance, an encore cover of an old 80’s folky/ cowpunk number by The Boothill Foot Tappers bringing proceedings to an overall close.

A chat with the band and a lengthier discussion on the idiosyncrasies of musical tastes with Andy, Dave and Richard, an affable Canadian gent who’d commented on my Parachute Men t-shirt (“haven’t seen one of those in 30 years!”), before I headed off down the hill to bring night 2 of 3 to a close. A good late shout then, this; ultimately, no trees were being pulled up here, this was just good old fashioned catchy and melodic indie pop from Jody and the Jerms, delivered with charm and Summery smiles aplenty. And there’s nowt wrong with that!