I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: September 25, 2026] Chelsea Jade

I was so excited that The Beths were going to do this “all request” show.  I imagined it might be an evening with them, where they play for 3 hours!  But of course, that’s not what The Beths do.  They like to elevate lesser known bands (I assume, that’s what they like to do).  Today’s lesser known band  was Chelsea Jade, who is apparently not lesser known in certain circles.

She is a South African-born New Zealand singer-songwriter and record producer based in Los Angeles. Vice has described her as New Zealand’s “Accidental Dream Pop Hero.”  In 2017, she was nominated for New Zealand’s Silver Scroll Award for song of the year for her song “Life of the Party.”

So she’s been around for a while.  And, it turns out she was a high school friend of Elizabeth Stokes of The Beths with whom she formed a small Folk trio, Teacups, to busk and get noticed.

Which might explain her fascinating stage show.  She came out on stage with two (really bright) tint flashlights that she waved around the crowd (and pointed in our eyes a but too often).  Music started and she slowly meandered into the audience.  It was neat and audacious.  She sang with the flashlights shining on her.  For the second song she handed the lights to people in the audience who shone them on her (and may have kept the lights?)

For a couple more songs she walked to the wing of the audience area and stood on one of the platforms singing to the people over there.

She came back to our area for a later song and asked that if everyone trusted her, they would kneel down.  Given my hip situation, I wasn’t kneeling down for her, trusting or not.  There was only one person behind me and I don’t think they were paying any attention to her, so I didn’t care.

The only time I recognized anything as a chorus was when she sang Superfan (it had that word a lot).

But here’s the thing.  I don’t even really know if the music was good or not.  I mean, it was synth pop and it had some catchy beats.  But it was so distracting having her walk around that I could never really focus one her.  I suppose if she is as big as it sounds like she is, some people would be insanely jealous about this proximity.

I think if I knew her music I would have thought this was so cool.  And I do think its’ cool–I love when a singer/band gets down with the audience.  But it simply 100% did not work for me.  Reading another review and the commenter is spot on–her music is mostly textures. I do love textures like this, but it was not what I was there for tonight (The Beths’ pop punk).  So it was hard to really vibe with it.

She sang the last song from the stage and I felt a little more engaged with her, but it was pretty short and then she was done.  I feel bad for not enjoying the set more.  It was certainly memorable, but the music wasn’t.

Mos of her shows have no setlist mentioned, but a recent one had this set list and given that all of the music was (I assume) on a computer, she probably doesn’t change things around all that much.