Charles Bueller | Bo Lucas
The Platform Tavern, Southampton
19th March 2026
The poster read “Bo and Bueller’s evening of baleful ballads.” Marlene Dietrich and a cast of hedonistic misfits came to mind. ‘Dancing on the edge of a volcano’, as they did in Weimar Germany and pre-revolutionary France.
The Platform sets the scene before anyone plays a note. There are voodoo masks, ethnic ephemera, old instruments and a western blanket woven with cow skulls hanging on a mediaeval wall. Bo Lucas steps onto the stage, gorgeous, petite and magnetic in a black jacket and pleated skirt. A gothic starlet in the limelight. Her set starts with Canyons, and the crowd is immediately stilled by the quality and tone of her extraordinary voice. Lazy comparisons to Brenda Lee or Stevie Nicks don’t come close to covering it. Bo told me afterwards that the song is about wanting to disappear and self-destruct, touching on addiction and the allure of hedonism as a way to escape oneself.
The second song, Be Mine, opens that focus out to encompass infatuation. As Bo puts it, “the sort of love where you know it’s not good for you, but you don’t care.” Bo’s long-running duo with Hayleigh King, Tapes For Diane, steeped its music in the universe of David Lynch. Always Be Fading carries that through with its fifties Americana and sense of transient existence. The mood and pace are briefly lightened by a plaintive rendering of Elvis’ That’s Alright Mama, before Bo flips the well-worn narrative of the travelling troubadour leaving broken hearts behind him to behind her with Searching For Eden.
Bo plays a Taylor GS Mini tuned to D, and the chords she chooses blend perfectly with her smoky vocal. Lead Belly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night? feels made for a bill of baleful ballads and fits neatly with the bluesy vibe of The Platform. Bo ends her set with Nothing Like The Man, which she says channels her rage at the inequalities that still exist within gender stereotypes. “Being expected to prop up a guy who ultimately would not do the same for you.”
Charles Bueller joins Bo on stage, tall and dark in a black jacket and high-collared striped Tim Burton shirt. His dark Valentino eyes make him the rakish troubadour to Bo’s sultry chanteuse. Together, they could have stepped out of a silver halide print, caught in a flash of gunpowder and glamour. They sing Henry Lee in the style of Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. Bo was born to sing Crazy (made famous by Patsy Cline), and Charles’ jazz guitar playing is spot on for this excellent choice of cover.
Bo leaves the stage, and Charles dives straight into his set with Birthday. It will come as no surprise that it’s not a happy birthday song, more of a requiem for a birthday. What A Day To Be You examines the loss of a partner as he watches her life unfold through the lens of social media. Tall Handsome James is a hungover love letter to an old friend. The songs are delivered in a laconic croon over deftly struck guitar chords. Charles plays a black Gretsch Jim Dandy archtop parlour guitar. The single pickup sounding just right straight into The Platform’s well-seasoned PA.
The spirit of Leonard Cohen has been with us since Bo dropped a hint of Sisters of Mercy into her first song. Charles’ cover of Paper Thin Hotel seals the deal. Later, he referred to Leonard as “our beloved Cohen.” The mood and louche resignation of this song from Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977) suits the evening perfectly. Bo comes back on to whisper French translations of lines from The Mess. “Sortir de ma robe” is among them, which gives a clear sense of the kind of mess under discussion. Female Horror Renaissance deals with a relationship breaking down in a jauntily macabre way. All of the original songs performed will be part of an ‘imminent’ Charles Bueller album. He says they are songs that didn’t fit with anything else he was doing musically.
The last song, Bueller’s Blues, presents us with the character of Charles Bueller. Bueller has styled himself after his “spiritual king”, Ferris. You may remember Ferris Bueller was a highly charismatic, manipulative and narcissistic individual. His ‘Day Off’ (1986) is now on the A-level curriculum. Ferris’ psychological profile has been interpreted as that of a sociopathic master of intentional living, or as Charles describes him, “the prick in the mirror.” The song works on many levels, one of them being the anguished cry of someone trying to move forward in an industry whose component parts are greed, betrayal and vanity.
Bo Lucas and Charles Bueller are two remarkable talents, performing with wit, heart, and cinematic flair. Keeping the spirit of dark torch-song ballads alive, in the Brechtian atmosphere of The Platform Tavern in Southampton’s misty docklands.
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Pictures by Antony Edwards and Gary Lashmar
More writing by Pete on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive.
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