This past Friday and Saturday Clairo put on her biggest shows ever in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, with two sold-out nights that filled the cavernous (almost Factory-like…) Franklin Music Hall with fans whose adoration of the bedroom-pop-icon-turned-her-generation’s-foremost-purveyor-of-soft-rock bordered on Beatlemania. The performances had the 26-year-old singer performing tracks from her recently released (well, March…) third LP, Charm, amidst a stage that resembled the set of an early ‘70s variety show… and it was iconic…
However, we were equally excited to see longtime PHILTHY phavorite Alice Phoebe Lou — who handled opening duties — play her biggest shows in the 215 to date. The 2,700-capacity nightclub is a far cry from the Portugal-based, South African-born singer/songwriter’s usual stops at Johnny Brenda’s or World Café Live, but she had no trouble (perhaps with a bit of help from Clairo’s elaborate stage set) filling the space with her own ethereal brand of soft rock.
While Alice Phoebe Lou’s latest full-length, Shelter, dropped just last summer, her 45-minute set didn’t play favorites with the LP, featuring only two of the album’s tracks, the dreamy and synth-laden “Open My Door” and “Angel”. Nearly half of the performance was comprised of songs from March 2021 LP (She released two that year.) Glow – her first-ever batch of love songs — including the charmingly fuzzy title track and “Dirty Mouth,” a sunshine punk ditty which proved to be the highlight of the set.
The performance closed with 2020 single “Witches,” the set’s oldest number, which provided its most rock n’ roll moments, both sonically and lyrically. And while certain older fans of Clairo were getting a bit antsy at that point, the majority of those in attendance seemed to be intrigued to hear more… perhaps in a setting slightly more intimate and slightly less daunting…
Earlier today Alice Phoebe Lou released brand-new single “Better” (which you can stream above), the follow-up to “The World Above,” which dropped in July. The track — which has Alice joined by David Parry on guitar, Dekel Adin on bass and percussion, and Ziv Yamin on drums and piano – was recorded at Cedar Creek Studio in Austin while on the road with Clairo. According to Alice, the track is about allowing loved ones the leeway to be human.
“I wrote this song on my childhood piano at my mother’s house in one sitting… I tapped into my imagination and past experiences of the way I used to idealize someone when I first met them, imagining an unrealistic future and being blind to their faults. Putting someone on a pedestal then makes the fall back to earth even harder, when reality sets in and you realize everything you’ve projected onto them and that they could never live up to that.”
