Dodgy

Hounslow, 1990, and a major-label deal before the label existed for it

Dodgy formed in Hounslow, west London, in 1990 around Nigel Clark, Mathew Priest and Andy Miller. A&M signed them in 1991, which puts them in the studio well before the press had a word for the guitar music of the mid-decade; the Britpop tag arrived later and was applied to them rather than chosen by them. 'The Dodgy Album' came out in 1993 and did not make them a household name.

'Homegrown', in 1994, did. 'Staying Out for the Summer' first charted at number 38 and then, in remixed form, reached 19 — a sequence that says something about how the band were built, by repetition and word of mouth rather than a single breakthrough moment. 'If You're Thinking of Me' peaked at 11. Across the whole run they have put twelve singles into the UK Top 40 and sold over two million records.

'Free Peace Sweet', and the long interruption

'Free Peace Sweet' arrived in 1996 and carried 'Good Enough', which reached number four and remains the song most people can hum back at them. It is also the reason 2026 was always going to be an anniversary year.

Clark left in 1997. Priest and Miller kept the name going with session musicians, releasing 'Real Estate' in 2001 before the band wound down again. The original three reunited in 2007, with Stuart Thoy joining on bass, and that line-up produced 'Stand Upright in a Cool Place' in 2012 and 'What Are We Fighting For' in 2016. Then the records stopped for ten years, while the live side carried on.

September 2025: the first new music in a decade

The break ended on 26 September 2025 with a single called 'Hello Beautiful' — their first new music in ten years. Its B-side, 'Cambrian Gold', reworked a track from the 2016 album. The whole project had been recorded in Wales and came out through Flip Flop Records, a long way from A&M.

It gave them their first UK Top 40 single in more than a decade, which for a band at thirty-five years old is a harder thing to do than it was at four. The comeback was announced alongside a working diary rather than a victory lap: an eleven-date UK run finishing at Stroud on 24 October, and then a support slot across Black Grape's anniversary tour, opening in Glasgow on 28 November and closing at Manchester Academy on 20 December.

'Hello Beautiful': nine songs, five players, no spectacle

In February 2026 the band released 'It's Not The End' and confirmed the album for 1 May. Clark described the song as arranged quickly in the studio during the sessions, starting from a lyric that felt direct and honest, and said the reviews calling it an older, wiser, deeper Dodgy were exactly how he wanted the band to sound in 2026. On the album as a whole he described treating each track as its own thing, held together by the group's harmonies and backing vocals.

The record runs to nine songs and was made by the three original members with Thoy on bass and multi-instrumentalist Graham Mann. Reviewers largely agreed on where its weight sits: the melodic architecture is unchanged, but the mood is more reflective, and the album gets its effect from restraint rather than scale. Maximum Volume Music gave it nine out of ten on release day, arguing that thirty-five years in the band were still writing music that was fresh and infectious, and picking out 'The Likes of You and Me', 'Summer Forever', 'Looking Back', 'Beside Me' and 'Out of Time'. The title track's chart placing — their first Top 40 entry in over ten years — was cited repeatedly as evidence the return was more than nostalgia trading.

Priest framed the touring alongside it as a deliberate choice, calling independent venues the lifeblood of live music; the spring and summer dates went to independents wherever the routing allowed, on the grassroots circuit that had built the band in the first place.

Where they stand this month

The touring year was built in two halves: the album run from 30 April in Norwich through spring and summer, and then the 'Free Peace Sweet' thirtieth-anniversary shows in bigger rooms, with The Icicle Works as co-billed guests. That second half is now gone. The O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire show on 26 September, Bristol on 1 October, Birmingham on 2 October and O2 Academy Liverpool on 9 October all carry the same notice on the venues' own pages: the show has been cancelled, there are no plans to reschedule, and full refunds come from whoever sold the ticket. Songkick lists the same four dates as cancelled, and no reason has been published by the band or the promoter.

That leaves an odd position for an act having its best year on record since the 1990s: the album is out and selling on their own site, which currently lists no dates at all, while the shows meant to mark the anniversary that framed the whole campaign have been withdrawn ten days before the first of them. The independent-venue dates remain the part of the year that actually happened.

What the shows have looked like in 2026

The album tour ran tight and unfussy. At Rescue Rooms in Nottingham on 10 May — doors at half six, Rosellas on at quarter to eight — Dodgy took the stage at 8.45pm and were off by ten, a seventy-five-minute set with no interval and no production to speak of. 'Bella Ciao' played in off tape as an intro, then 'So Let Me Go Far' opened cold.

The shape of the set is the interesting part. New material is not quarantined into a polite mid-section: 'Hello Beautiful' went in third and 'It's Not The End' fifth, immediately after 'Staying Out for the Summer', which is a confident piece of sequencing for a band whose audience has three songs it came for. 'Summer Forever', 'Call It What You Want', 'Looking Back' and 'Fall Into Me' all made the running order too, so roughly a third of the night came from the new record. The ballast is 'In a Room', 'Out of Time' and 'If You're Thinking of Me', a Blaze Foley cover in 'Oval Room', an acoustic 'Lovebirds', 'Good Enough' held back to second from last, and 'Grassman' to finish. Larger bills such as Newport in January stretched to a longer set with 'You've Gotta Look Up', 'Waiting for the Sun', 'Found You' and 'Big Brown Moon', and an encore built around 'Good Enough' and a run of covers.