Live Review: Sam Fender at Aragon Ballroom • Chicago

Brassneck | September 29, 2025

Sam Fender

Sam Fender

Aragon Ballroom

Chicago, IL

September 25, 2025

Review by Riley Vernon

Good things come to those who wait — and Chicago has long awaited the electrifying return of “master storyteller” Sam Fender. In his first return to Chicago since a pre-pandemic set at Lollapalooza in 2019 (and the better-left-unsaid technical calamity of his 2022 festival appearance), Fender’s first true headline show in Chicago on Thursday night was long overdue. The North Shields guitar powerhouse may be selling out arenas across the pond, but those lucky enough to snag tickets at Aragon Ballroom got a show just as thrilling as it was intimate.

Touring seven cities south of the Mississippi on the US leg, Fender and his band (Dean Thompson (guitar), Joe Atkinson (keyboard), Tom Ungerer (bass), Drew Michaels (drums), Johnny Davis (sax), Mark Webb (horns), Brooke Bentham (vocals)) launched passionately into “Angel in Lothian,” from his sophomore album Seventeen Going Under to open the night. The People Watching singer gushed over the eclectic Chicago venue and the legends of the Green Mill tunnels before slowing down into Arm’s Length, highlighting Bentham’s harmonies and transitioning gracefully into the melancholic melodies of the set’s first half.

An artist whose music is rooted in themes of place and class (evident in the visuals for the People Watching album and tour, featuring work from the Geordie-born social photographer Tish Murtha), Fender’s music and his career-spanning setlist wereDean Thompson (guitar), Joe Atkinson (keyboard), Tom Ungerer (bass), Drew Michaels (drums), Johnny Davis (sax), Mark Webb (horns), Brooke Bentham (vocals) just as personal and bruising heard live as it is written. Just as Fender marvelled at us and our Al Capone memoirs, we marveled at him; a boisterous and enthusiastic crowd echoed back even his “dumbest song [they’ve] ever written” about Covid-era Aldi trips while seizure-inducing rainbow lights flashed from the stage. Fans roared when Fender announced an additional eight songs would be featured in an extended deluxe release at the end of the year, before performing the unreleased track “Talk To You”.

As Fender and his band made their appreciation for the city clear, Thompson grabbed hold of a Gibson SG “Freebird” guitar borrowed from Chicago Music Exchange to play the Tom Petty classic, “Love is a Long Road”. Fender couldn’t leave before echoing out his hit Seventeen Going Under, which found him an expanded audience after its second verse went viral on TikTok a few years ago. Audiences singing “I was far too scared to hit him, but I would hit him in a heartbeat now / that’s the thing with anger, it begs to stick around” could have been heard from the Riviera’s Kelsea Ballerini show.

After an electric, brassy, and powerful setlist, Fender slowed to a crescendo and closed out in an encore performance. After an emotional ballad with The Dying Light, followed by one of his self-proclaimed favorites off of his newest album, Something Heavy, Fender finished with one of his biggest hits, Hypersonic Missiles, a song that’s managed to become even more timely and cathartic live.

Crowds sang their way out the door, ringing the vocative O’s of the song’s bridge, a testament to the reverberating experience of Fender’s live show.

Setlist via Setlist. FM