by Roy Scopazzi
As a point of respect, I try to avoid certain words to describe musical performances that may sound complimentary on the surface but have implications that might come across as infantilizing or diminishing. Such phrases as “Quaint” or “Cozy” seem like they might downplay, while “Cute” feels like I’m not taking the performer (or the audience) seriously. I want to start off this by saying I don’t mean it in that way, but in the sense that the type of performance I saw that night was one of comfort and looseness. The type where the artist feels closer to the audience without feeling like they’re pandering at all.
That’s the good stuff.
Before the show started proper, Em Beihold introduced it by telling the audience that this is like “performing in a living room”. While this was absolutely helped by the venue (the Swedish American Hall‘s Lodge aesthetics gives it a kind of Cozy Lodge Mood), it was mostly helped out by the setlist mostly being comprised of new songs that have not been recorded and are in different levels of being finished. This was a testing ground, and having only a piano to work with made it really feel like we were witnessing these songs bloom organically.
What really nailed the vibes in the end was the encore. Em came back on stage and sheepishly admitted that she hadn’t had another song she had practiced. So she asked the camera guy for his phone to look up the lyrics for an older song and sang it with the audience backing her on each word. It wasn’t the moment that felt the most real, but it was the moment that tied the whole thing together. Looking back on her other setlists she hasn’t done any other encores so this really was a special occasion, and I’m glad I was there to see it.
e.woolf opened up the show and worked to set the mode as she worked with only an acoustic guitar. She played a mixture of original material as well as covers, most notably Please Please Please me where she let the audience say the swear word, playfully saying “You said it, not me”.
I’ll be 100% honest, the main reason I chose to cover this show was because I hadn’t been to the Swedish in over a year. My reasons to go to shows are varied and sometimes it’s because I want to go to a place I haven’t been to for a while, especially if it’s a cozy place such as the Swedish. I’ll then look up who is performing there soon and listen to a selection of their work, and Em is the one that stuck out because I hear in her the kind of artist that will explode, especially after her debut album. She just has that kind of sound that will captivate audiences in the Fillmore or Regency the next time around, so I would recommend getting on this bandwagon now.
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