I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 2, 2024] nelward

I hadn’t heard of Nelward, but holy cow a few people in the audience sure did.

Nick “nelward” Elward is an electronic composer based in Atlanta. His music takes cues from video game soundtracks, jazz fusion, old school hip hop, and classic pop.

Nelward’s songs are (mostly) short and (mostly) silly.   He came out snazzily dressed and began singing DVD (30 seconds long, although longer live, with the entirety of the lyrics: Have you seen the DVD of me? repeated).

Ghost was a bit more of a real song–catchy and rather fun.  He did some wild dances and clearly loved the reactions of his silly behavior.

More representative of his stuff seems to be “I Hope My Pants Don’t Fall Down.” A minute of silliness.

So Nelward didn’t “play” any music for the first half of the set.   He triggered the songs and then danced as sang while the beats played in the background.  It was a little surprising how hard it was to hear his (silly) lyrics–but I think he was screaming and, the crowd was really into it.

There was a woman next to me who screamed like Nelward was a hugely famous figure when he came out (and she was sincere I determined throughout the rest of the show).  And, later through his set a different woman came over and not only sing/screamed the lyrics, she harmonized with him!

As stated earlier, his songs vary in style.  I rather enjoyed the “song about drugs” called Get Off the Pot which was a metal anthem.  “Sleepwalk” was a kind of white-funk song.   For his song he strapped on a guitar and played along to the backing tracks, including the solo.

It was kind of fun that he interjected the silly 30 second songs in between the longer ones.  He’s also clearly writing new songs as “Drugs” and “Oh Tommy” are both unreleased.

Although many of his longer songs were kind of cheesy 80’s sounding synth songs.  Which I guess makes sense for the night of music, but it’s still kind of weird to hear.

I enjoyed the set but I was glad it was fairly short.  I have to say though that there were plenty of people around me who not only wanted him to play more but actually left the front of the room (and didn’t come back) when his set was done.

1. DVD §
2. GHOST ¢
3. I Hope My Pants Don’t Fall Down §
4. Sadboi ‰
5. Get Off the Pot §
6. Sleepwalk ¢
7. Drugs ∞
8. i’m a dog §
9. The Werewolf Ø
10. lydia £
11. Christmas Boyz §
12. THE RUNAROUND ∞
13. Oh Tommy [unreleased]
14. apple shampoo ∇

§ Short Songs (2020)
¢ Singles Vol. 1 (2019)
∇ Alive in Screen (2017)
Ø Eat Your Dreams (2020)
£ Lucid Scream (2022)
‰ single 2023
∞ single 2024