Last night, I walked up the stairs of Foellinger for the first time in quite a while, heading in the doors just before Single Player was planning to take the stage around 8 p.m. House and stage lights were on as I ventured up to the balcony to check things out before the local openers started to do their thing. I was optimistic heading into the venue, as Sky Ferreira was one of the shows I’ve been more excited about seeing that Star Course has brought into town across the past few semesters in C-U.
Sean Neumann’s band Single Player took the stage and have a particular sense of humor that I can definitely get behind. “We won’t fuck up this time, we hope” and “We usually play basements — and you guys are like, twenty feet away from us right now” Neumann says, as him and the three others that make up Single Player cruised through their 30-ish minute set (tops). After performing with Speedy Ortiz at this year’s Pygmalion Festival, Neumann & Co. have a good thing going with Single Player’s resume building as they now were opening for Sky Ferreira — though I doubt they really give a damn about that. Their set was sprinkled with tracks from last year’s Could Care Less and this year’s Are You There?, in which admittedly, they had an issue with tuning on a couple of tracks, shaking it off in the process and laughing at one another. I’m not certain of how many songs they actually went through in that timespan — but it was totally worthwhile and entertaining if you were there to see them.
Now — onto Sky Ferreira. The 22-year-old pop star came out on stage with the three others in her band to play what was expected — tracks from Night Time, My Time, and throw in a couple from her debut EP. Sure, that’s what happened, in short. Though, more detail would show that throughout the set, the crowd was attentive and anxious as “Sky” was performing. The crowd was young, mostly college students, that appeared to make up “the people” on Thursday night. Ferreira donned a full-on winter coat — oversized and hooded — with two skinny legs poking out of the bottom, which was an interesting choice.
“Your bone structure is perfect!” was something I overheard at one point. “What bar are you going to afterwards?” was another. Awkward? A little. Fine? Yeah. Not a big deal — as it could be worse. Ferreira got off to a slightly rocky start, but recovered after “24 Hours” and “It Ain’t Your Right” worked out the kinks. She played all but a couple of songs on her very good debut LP, highlighted by “Heavy Metal Heart” and “I Will”, and closing with “You’re Not The One”. Though the vocals throughout the record range quite a bit, I couldn’t help but notice the backing vocal track that accompanied Ferreira at certain points during the live set.
The set was relatively short and sweet, rounding things out around an hour for her performance. Not shockingly, as she only has so much material to throw out there for a live show. I was glad to see Ferreira interact quite a bit with the audience, though she sort of had to at points in time when stagehands were working on getting some water to the stage about midway through the show. Though the band was pushed back about 15 feet from the edge of the stage where the audience had gathered up against, Ferreira ventured out with her mic and shuffled around a bit, huge coat and all, throughout the set.
Photos by Maddie Rehayem.
