BL0G

Hiii. I will be using this space to blog about the shows I attend. You guys will get my full and honest takes. Remember, these are just my opinions. Read and enjoy! -Aly

I saw Bôa at Warsaw, which isn't my favorite venue, however, they were really amazing. Of course, I discovered Bôa through the Serial Experiments Lain opening so I had to go in my Lain shirt. I had approximately two drinks and was the perfect amount of turnt. Jasmine Rodgers is an amazing singer. I think she has such a soulful voice. It just reminds me of nature, like the forest and birds singing. She has a way of entrancing you with her vocals. She's got a Mitski-esque vibe to her where her music makes you feel incredibly sad and you kinda want her to be your mother. She's also so British lol so I had a hard time understanding her when she was speaking. The rest of the band was also amazing.

I screamed the lyrics when they played Duvet, which they played as the very last song at the end of the encore, which I thought was perfect. I like when artists leave their most famous song for the end of the concert. The guitar rift during Duvet was also perfect. This is one of my all time favoirte songs, everything about it is so beautiful and nostalgic and I feel like hearing it live fuflfilled a prophecy for me. When we were leaving the concert, heading towards the train, some random guy asked us what the best Bôa song is and I said Duvet and they said "real fan". They also played some other bangers from that infamous album like Twilight and Elephant. I also really like some of their new songs from their 2024 album Whiplash. My favorite is Beautiful & Broken. Before playing that song, Jasmine gave a cute anectdote about how her first steps were in New York so NYC is special to her. All in all, I had a great time. Bôa makes me have hope for the future. You know what millenials..y'all are cool.

4/11/24

VS Self

I went to see some emo bands at Warsaw. The line up was party hats, Catalyst..., and VS Self. I want to preface with the fact that I hate this venue lol. Security there always makes it difficult for us and are super strict. I was supposed to interview the bands, so my friend and I managed to get backstage with our media passes. While we were back there, Catalsyst... was performing and they were awesome. It was hard to hear the details of the music from backstage because it is so loud but I could tell they were giving their all. I know that with emo bands, it's more about the vibe, and I was impressed by their high energy. My friend and I were headbanging and dancing along. Then, we decided we wanted to get into the crowd for a little. This was when things got a bit chaotic.

As soon as we exited the backstage area, security walked up to us and told us we were not allowed to go backstage regardless of our media passes. My friend and I had left our bags backstage with all our shit, so we needed to get it back, but security was not budging. I literally argued with this security guard for like 10 straight minutes. After talking to several people from the venue, we just had to wait until the show was over to get our bags back. I was very stressed out. At this point, my friend and I just wanted to get drunk. So we keep drinking and enjoy the rest of the show. VS Self's set was great from what I can remember. They closed with "Mourn" which was so great to see live. I recently started getting into the band and midwest emo in general, but I do really love the genre. It's so earnest and makes me feel like an overly angsty teen in suburbia. I wish I had more to report on but I was not being very observant on this messy night. Shout out to the bands tho...I LOVE EMOS!

4/5/24

Snow Strippers

I got to see Snow Strippers last night. Shout out to Graham for inviting me to the show :) This electronic duo is the definiton of swag over talent. I can't lie, I used to be a SS hater, because I saw them live at a different show in NYC right as they were first blowing up and I couldn't understand a word that girl was singing on stage. But after listening to their discography, they've grown on me a lot, specially after Night Killaz Vol.1 came out. I feel like their production really elevated with that album. My favorite songs of theirs are Just Your Doll, which they opened with, and Just A Hint, which they closed with. So I was very pleased.

Now onto their performance. In terms of vocals, Tatiana is not the strongest. But damn that girl will literally dance all night long. I was very impressed with her stamina. Graham was also killing it with the soundboard, abusing the fuck outta that airhorn and producer's tags. They really had the crowd dancing the whole night, which was awesome. They also had really good visuals playing in the background. It was a super entrancing video with gifs of dolphins and anime girls and macbook videos of them - reminded me of the 2014 tumblr days. I was literally staring at that video the whole night. The duo definitley has an indie sleaze vibe, they remind me a bit of Crystal Castles and early Yung Lean.I wanted to buy their cute anime merch but the shirt was $60 so fuuuck that!

I had a lot of fun at this concert, mostly because I loved dancing to loud electronic music in flashing strobe lights. I was very dissisociated at this concert, but a good kind of dissociation. I almost felt like it was a dream and all the people in the crowd were dream citizens.