I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: December 15, 2023] Karina Rykman 

I‘ve seen Karina Rykman play bass with Marco Benevento three times.   She exudes a joy that is infectious.  And her sound with Marco is outstanding–her fuzz bass is unparalleled.

So I’d wanted to see her solo for a while, even though her solo songs are a bit more discoey than I would have liked. She opened for Guster back in April and she and her band blew me away.  In fact, my wife liked her so much that she was totally on board with seeing her again.

Yes, her singing voice is rather discoey (she must use lots of effects on it to sound so echoey and outer-spacey, but man, when she jams, she gets down and dirty and often quite heavy.  But she also steps back and lets her impressive guitar player Adam November take over.  And her drummer Chris Corsico is pretty awesome too.

She sold out Milkboy (I was supposed to see her there in 2020 and I think it would have been a very different show) which she was pretty thrilled about.  And the crowd was 100% dancing to her groove.

She opened with three songs from her album Joyride (which had not come out in April).  “Joyride” and “All That You Wanted” are softer songs that accentuate her way with melody and hooks–the choruses are dynamite.

“Plants” is a great instrumental that lets Adam November show off his guitar skills and his bag of tricks.  The fact that this segued into another instrumental, the defiantly noisier and more chaotic “Dirty South” (with amazing time changes and starts and stops) was super fun and meant that it was something like 15 minutes of instrumental jam going on.

I was under the impression that her sets were fairly short (based on what I have no idea). Since all of these songs were pretty long I wondered if the set was almost over.  Boy was I wrong.

She told us she was going to play “City Kids” and  the crowd went berserk.  Yep, it’s that good and that bassline is like a hook right into you.

Then they played “Springtheme” by Ween.  I had no idea it was a Ween song but I’m sure many other people did.  I did know that “Pepper” was a Butthole Surfers song.  It’s a song I know well from the 90s and her delivery was so different it was hilarious (but in a really good way).

“Fever Dream” and “Run of the Mill” are more catchy songs from the record.  She followed those with a cover that I had requested.  I requested “Satanist” by boygenius only because I had seen that she played it the other night.  I don’t usually like to ask for songs, but if she was going to play a bunch of covers anyhow, then why not the one that I wanted to hear.  It was great (although my daughter, a huge boygenius fan) wasn’t as impressed.

“Reboot” was another great instrumental jam–and surely that was the end of the show because the ending of the jam sounds like the end of a show–complete with a false ending.  But no, there was a lot more.  “No Occasion” is probably her most discoey song and it is heavenly.  The chorus is just angelic.

Then came another cover–“Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club.  I love that Adam November even did the weirdo “James Brown!” bit.  And t hen just for good measure, she threw in her funkiest most dancey instrumental, “Atom Dance.”  She’d been playing for 90 minutes now and showed no sing of flagging with physically or her smile.

But the set was coming to an end, and she regaled us “Elevator” another sweet and catchy song from the album.

There’s no room to go for an encore break in Milkboy.  So, she didn’t even pretend or joke about it.  She just asked “one more?”  And she launched into a crowd-jumping rendition of Blur’s “Song 2.”  (If ever there was a crowd pumping anthem, it’s this one).  It’s a short song, but she allowed for some extra jamming so the show stretched out even longer.

It was such a fun set and Karinais so friendly and cool that she was waiting at the merch table as we walked by–she somehow managed to get to the table before anyone else.   We were too wiped out to go say hi, although I feel like it will probably be the last time she’ll be playing a venue that small.

1. Joyride ♥
2. All That You Wanted ♥
3. Plants ♥
4. Dirty South ‰
5. City Kids ‰
6. Spingtheme (Ween cover)
7. Pepper (Butthole Surfers cover)
8. Fever Dream ♥
9. Run of the Mill ♥
10. Satanist (boygenius cover)
11. Reboot
12. No Occasion §
13. Genius of Love (Tom Tom Club cover)
14. Atom Dance
15. Elevator ♥
    encore
16. Song 2 (Blur Cover)

♥ Joyride
§ 2021 single
‰ 2020 single