DRESSED LIKE BOYS

We’re not going to lie: we’re not about to back down from a bold statement or two. We once announced 50 Cent here and wrote, without a twinge of conscience, that his “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” was the very best record of 2003. When we told you in 2004 that Europe would bring spandex trousers and the poodle hairstyle back into fashion here, we proclaimed loudly that ‘The Final Countdown’ was the best single of the 80s, and you don’t want to know how wildly enthusiastic we were about Eddy Wally’s body of work and how we shouted that from the rooftops when he came to play here in 1977. This time we swear on the heads of all the children ever conceived backstage at the Lokerse Feesten: the LP “Dressed like boys” (2025) by DRESSED LIKE BOYS is truly the very, no, in capital letters, MOST BEAUTIFUL record we took in last year. We repeat: neither nationally nor internationally has any artist managed to capture so much soul-stirring beauty on a single record. “Dressed like boys”, the record, by Dressed Like Boys, the artist, is an inferno of world songs. After 19 seconds of ‘Nando’, the opening track, a relentless battle erupts time and again between the hairs on our arms and those on the back of our necks over which will stand on end first. ‘Lies’, ‘Pinnacles’, ‘Pride’… All world songs that will even make the foam on your beer weep with emotion.  Jelle Denturck is the man behind Dressed Like Boys. We’ve felt like phoning the King a few times now, urging him to induct Jelle into the Order of Leopold straight away, for the sheer splendour he bestows upon the people at a time when beauty and gentleness are under pressure everywhere.  “Dressed Like Boys” is one of the most beautiful Belgian records ever to have triumphed in the offices of the Lokerse Feesten. By now, you’ve probably forgotten that ‘pulling a toe out of the water’ in our opening sentence is an expression that makes no sense, but you’re somewhere completely in love with an LP, from 2025, by Dressed Like Boys. Join us on Tuesday 4 August. The collective memory has already reserved a room for this performance, because these will be sixty minutes you’ll still be musing over in forty years’ time.