This past Wednesday, April 16th, all of the proudly “sad girls” of the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection (okay, about 3,000 of them…) were gathered at The Met Philadelphia for opening night of Lucy Dacus’ Forever Is a Feeling Tour, the former Philthy resident’s most profound local appearance yet (and possibly the best show the opera house has hosted since reopening in 2018). “I feel like cuckoo bananas right now, just to be here… This is something from a dream I would’ve had like 15 years ago,” says Dacus shortly into the 90-minute set.
But the night’s headliner wasn’t the only one on the bill providing notable profundity. Opening the evening was a simplistically moving set from trans singer/songwriter and activist jasmine.4.t, who recently signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records and whose debut LP, You Are The Morning (which dropped this January), was produced by Bridgers, Dacus, and Julien Baker. And providing direct support was Katie Gavin – who recently appeared on the cover of Alternative Press with Dacus, recreating K.D. Lang and Cindy Crawford’s famous 1993 Vanity Fair cover — whose brilliantly synthy indie pop trio MUNA (also on Saddest Factory) headlined the same room just two years ago.
“How many people know who I am?” Gavin asked midway through her set, before laughing as she had apparently had her question answered: “Somebody just held up a lesbian flag…” While we’ve seen Katie many times as the frontwoman for MUNA, this was our first opportunity to see the solo show in the 215, and apparently these dates with Lucy are providing an experience that fans who saw her during the last third of 2024 didn’t get. “I wanted to do these songs once with a full band and it feels really nice to do it on this tour,” Gavin tells the crowd as her 40-minute set draws to an end.
Katie Gavin is touring in support of What a Relief, her folky solo debut which dropped last October (also on Saddest Factory), and her Tuesday night set included 7 of the album’s 12 songs, in addition to an unreleased track. Album highlights “Casual Drug Use,” “As Good As It Gets” (which I spun during the March edition of Philthy Radio and features Mitski), and “Aftertaste” likewise provided highlights of the live show, but fans went extra wild to see Gavin on fiddle for “Inconsolable” and “The Baton.” Katie also admitted to being especially happy with possibly unlikely reactions to “Sanitized”: “That’s such a weird fucking song, and the youngsters in the room have embraced that, and it makes me really hopeful.”
However, her support slot was not the last The Met’s sold-out crowd would see of Katie Gavin that night. About halfway through Lucy Dacus’ set, the singer/songwriter took to a blue couch in the middle of the stage (a nod to her 2022 tour, when she performed entire shows laying down on a couch after suffering two herniated discs) for three stripped-down numbers, which wrapped with Katie joining the headliner to provide vocals for the other half of “Bullseye,” Lucy’s recent collaboration with Hozier. After the song’s conclusion, Gavin laughingly admitted to not being quite prepared: “We ran through it, but I fucked up every possible part.” However, between the tears, cheers, and [for some of us] beers, I don’t think any of us queers could’ve possibly noticed.
