Hen Hoose Collective @ The Queen's Hall, 28 May

This time last year, 12 songwriters convened at a remote studio on the Isle of Lewis. Spearheaded by Hen Hoose Collective’s founder Tamara Schlesinger, the following six days of structured collaboration resulted in The Twelve, an impressive album of cross-genre pop songs and Hen Hoose’s second full-length project.

Performing at the Queen’s Hall on a warm May evening, the Scottish collective of women and non-binary musicians are there to celebrate The Twelve, released back in January, with a short film screening, panel discussion and live performance.

Once the audience has filtered in from the bar and the auditorium doors are closed on the evening sunshine, Schlesinger introduces the film: a documentary by Lewis-based filmmaker Zoe Paterson Macinnes showing the making of the album. We see clips of Ray Aggs plucking their violin to demonstrate the melody in their head, Susan Bear rehearsing a bass line, Emma Pollock (formerly of the Delgados) and Frances McKee (of the Vaselines) laughing as they workshop lyrics together, and McKee asking the team if she has time to go swimming before recording her parts. It’s a heart-warmingly candid glimpse into an unusual yet fruitful creative process.

“It was a leap of faith,” Pollock says afterwards in the panel discussion alongside Schlesinger and producer and singer-songwriter Amandah Wilkinson (aka AMUNDA), chaired by journalist Nicola Meighan. But the project was built on the trust the team had in one another, which has grown over the years since Schlesinger, who records music as MALKA, started Hen Hoose during lockdown to address gender imbalance in the music industry.

Hen Hoose @Queens Hall, Glasgow. 28 May 2026 | photo: Kat Gollock

Most of all, the three Hen Hoose members emphasise the fun they had creating the album and the strength of the friendships that string it all together. And that joy is shared generously in the evening’s second half, when twelve Hen Hoose musicians take to the stage and burst into the album’s radiant opener Wipe Out. With MALKA on lead vocals and Aggs’ fiddle weaving through the sun-kissed harmonies, it’s just the life-affirming boost needed to take us from the night’s down-to-earth first half into the joy of live performance.

Despite having twelve performers on stage, the collective transition between songs like a well-oiled machine. Not all the songwriters featured on The Twelve are here tonight, with Sarah Hayes and Lauren Macdonald joining on keys and drums respectively to make up the full dozen. AMUNDA delivers an exuberant lead vocal on Rich (Katy’s in Space) in the absence of Carla J. Easton and Schlesinger stands in for Djana Gabrielle during the breathy spoken-word French interludes on Game of 2 to deliberately comic effect.

The talent of each band member is undeniable. Inge Thomson sings lead on the lovely, understated The Lucky Ones and threads Blessings on the Day with an ethereal flute solo. SHEARS and Cariss Crosbie deliver monumental vocal performances over the tense, breathless beat of Out My Mind, while Jill Lorean’s vocals snake over the grimy synth bass on Game of 2.

But the night’s most resonant moments come when the performers’ voices blend in harmony, as on the hymnal Blessings on the Day, which – despite McKee’s amusing anecdote about getting the title from the mysterious words of a stranger on Lewis – feels profoundly sincere and heartfelt at the end of the show tonight.

The warmth and joy shared among the collective is palpable to the audience, certainly to the teenage fans in the row behind me, dancing and cheering as the band tears through their final number, In Control. If, as Pollock suggested during the panel discussion, we simply need to see women and non-binary people working in the music industry to help normalise gender balance, seeing these musicians doing it so exceptionally well and with so much love for their craft certainly can’t hurt.