[ATTENDED: April 30, 2019] Now, Now
The only band on this line up that I actually knew was Now, Now.
I loved their album Threads, a cool poppy shoegazey, guitar based album with chill vocals from Cacie Dalager and great music/beats from Bradley Hale.
Threads was the band’s second album and it features backing vocals and guitars from Jess Abbott. Abbott left in 2017 to form one of my favorite new bands Tancred.
So, having loved Threads and Jess Abbott, I thought I should check out Now, Now live(a hard band to search online).
Well, something has happened to the band since Jess left. They went from a shoegazey poppy guitar band to a synthy, very dancey band.
And apparently people love it!
Their stage lights were setup to be very dark and strobey. Dalager’s hair was an amazing shade of orange (the pictures above don’t do it any justice). And then, like Rituals of Mine and to a certain extent Sleigh Bells, the show was mostly a dancing, singing front woman and a guy playing drums.
I never really saw Bradley Hale at all. From the angle I was at, he was blocked by the keybaord. So I don’t really know what he was doing back there. I did see a laptop, but he was definitely playing drums. There was a keyboardist/guitarist who came out for a few songs, but I never heard his name. And then there was Dalager.
Dalager was energetic and fun. She came close to the edge of the stage and sang right to us. Actually she spent a little more time on the other side of the stage. The problem there is that she was crouching down a lot and hardly anyone could see her. But the lights were so dark and strobey it was hard to see her at all (this below is the best picture I took of her).
The lights were so dark that there was little warm or inviting about the set.
Dalager was certainly fun, and she talked to us between songs. But there was a kind of sameness to everything that was hard to really enjoy.
They played most of the songs from their newer album (which I didn’t know) although they opened with “Wolf,” a favorite from Threads. But they had totally changed the style around from shoegazey to more dancey. It wasn’t bad exactly, just very different from what I was expecting. I was amused when she said, “I forgot the words, that’s a great way to start the show.”
The rest of the set was new songs that I didn’t know. I enjoyed the chorus of AZ (there’s one line, it’s easy to sing along).
Dalager occasionally played electric or acoustic guitar, but mostly she stood up front and sang along to the beats.. Most of the songs were catchy and fun, but honestly I was kind of bored.
I don’t know how people know about Now, Now, but a lot of people did. In fact, the woman in front of me was there just for Now, Now. She sang every word to every song and when the set was over she left. The majority of fans seemed to be for Foxing though, but I could be wrong about that.
This reviewer from Texas had a very different opinion of the show than me, though (she was utterly blown away).
I have since seen that on this co-headlining tour that Foxing and Now, Now are rotating who plays last. I am so glad that I saw them in this order, because Now, Now, would have been a big let down after the Foxing set.
- Wolf*
- Saved
- Yours
- Holy Water
- MJ
- AZ
- P0WDER
- Set It Free
- SGL
- Can’t Help Myself
All songs from Saved (2018) except * from Threads (2012)
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