Wreckless Eric (live at The Face Bar)

Reading
26 February 2026

A wet Thursday evening found sixty or seventy hardy souls making their way to Reading’s Face Bar for the inaugural date of Eric Goulden‘s 2026 European solo tour. Nominally to promote last year’s England’s Screaming album, it felt more like an opportunity to engage with an audience who had clearly travelled many miles with him over the years, such was the familiarity and ease of atmosphere.

The Face Bar is an interesting venue, looking like a social club suite with a series of interconnected rooms and the stage for tonight is set up in front of some very comfy looking chairs and makes for a convivial setting. An engaging character and raconteur, Eric is armed only with two guitars and a series of effects pedals to lay waste to songs old and new.

Looking sprightly, dressed all in black and sporting shades, he immediately goes into comedian mode suggesting, looking out at the audience, it was “the night of the living dead”. After a little more teasing, he grabbed the guitar and launched into “Father To The Man” from 2019’s Transience. The acoustic sounds strong in his hands and a little bit wild and he doesn’t hold back, sawing at the strings. The voice is still pliable and the estuary twang contorts the words into shapes before sending them out.

It goes down well with the assorted throng and old faithful “Reconnez Cherie” comes next with its memories of teenage fumblings. His voice is warm and cosy and as he rhymes “Zodiac” with “Pacamac”, people in the crowd join in and you do have the feeling that this is a real trip down memory lane. He pulls faces as he wrangles the guitar solo and tells us “I’m glad that’s over!!”. “Home And Away”, with its “unnecessary key change”, follows and that is really immediate. He seems to be enjoying himself immensely as he half-expected the place to be empty, so makes a few foot shuffles and grins at members of the audience.

“Drag Time” and “Badhat Town” from the recent Leisureland album are a little more measured, although the Duane Eddy twang is rather nice. Then he tackles that album’s centrepiece “Standing Water” and here his dark visions of a bleak town from where a would-be hero band emerges is threaded through with My Bloody Valentine-style guitar abuse. He kneels down, pressing at the pedals, generating waves of creaking wash, the venerable acoustic coping gamely as an ambient drone assaults the audience.

Eric looks gleeful at this unexpected aural attack and I remember reading sometime that he didn’t consider himself a particularly proficient guitarist. He is really proving that not to be true as next up we have a touch of country blues, although even that is given a blast of overdrive.

Before switching to electric guitar and tackling some of the songs from England’s Screaming, he starts a bit of a political harangue. His dislike for Trump receives an appreciative response and he goes on to tell us his three bizarre ideas if he were to run for prime minister. The electric has a very different feel and after telling us how terrible the original Captains Of Industry album was and how deservedly it was mauled and that it led to a certain amount of personal decline, you really feel he is grasping the songs back from the doldrums, as if rehoming them and giving them a second chance.

The interesting thing about these solo versions is that you realise just how strong the songs are, so “Life Line” is nice and sharp, and “playtime Is Over” has a real rocking strut to it. “Lady Of The Manor” is as utterly charming here as it is on the album and puts him on a parallel with Ray Davies for touching social realism.

Another interlude finds Eric telling us about supporting Stiff Little Fingers and how their audience was made up mainly of “large belligerent men”, so he had a load of t-shirts made in 4XL which never sold; and how when he started out they played at a place where the intercom of the neighbouring cab office would cut through the PA. He really does have us laughing out loud at times. The final electric song is the big break “Whole Wide World” and its peaks and troughs are like some Velvet Underground out-take as once again Eric kneels down and draws whines and whistles from the old machine. He even leans it against the amp while he preparing for his next step.

Before tackling the acoustic again, he reads from his memoirs which, are available to buy, choosing a snippet that found him and his girlfriend of the time being invited for “drinkies” at their neighbours in whichever Kent town was their home at the time. He clearly enjoys this little interlude and it also amuses the crowd. A subtle bit of salesmanship before tackling the last song, Transience‘s “The Half Of It” and there is still something vulnerable in the delivery, even though he is enjoying the experimental nature of the drones that he is teasing from the guitar. You really have the sense that solo is where his heart is at the moment, and his love for the songs is still tempered by a desire to push them and the audience a little bit further.

Eric doesn’t bother with an encore, but to be honest he has given enough and the crowd is more than happy. I didn’t know what to expect from the show but was seriously impressed with the voice, the charisma, the musicianship and the experimental nature of some of it. Check Wreckless Eric out at a venue near you. I guarantee you will go home with a smile on your face.-

-Words: Mr Olivetti-
-Pictures: –