What makes a good concert?
I argue that the true magic of a live performance — and of music as a whole — is intimacy. A sense of community in a sea of thousands, closeness between artist and audience that transcends the barrier between seating and stage. And somehow, on her very first arena tour for her newest album, “A Matter of Time,” Laufey created that magic, translating the intimacy I feel when listening to her music into a live performance that enchanted her audience.
Laufey opened her set with “Clockwork,” immediately setting the tone for the rest of her concert. The first “ding-dong” of a bell tolling transported me to a world tethered between the youth of giggly first loves and the mature self-awareness of knowing what it’s like to fall for someone new. The light, bossa nova rhythms behind the lyrics were even more prominent live. I couldn’t help but tap my feet as I sang along.
The next two songs replicated a similar airy, jazzy vibe — “Lover Girl” with its romantic, bouncy chorus and iconic claps was followed by the biting, bittersweet lyrics of “Dreamer.” The song’s final lines, “No boy’s going to kill the dreamer in me,” segued seamlessly into the melancholy of the next song, “Falling Behind.”
But the true magic emerged in songs that showcased Laufey’s dynamic vocal range. Slow in build-up, but almost cinematic in the choruses and bridges, they had the audience holding up flashlights in awe. Reader, if you haven’t experienced singing “When you go to hell, I’ll go there with you too” or angry-screaming the choruses of “Too Little, Too Late” with a crowd of a thousand people wearing white skirts and ribbons, you should. There is no better catharsis and no stronger bond of affection than the one between complete strangers who like the same music.
By far the best part of the night was the jazz set (during Act II), and in my opinion, it is what truly “cast a spell” during the concert. Jazz is intimate in its design because it is founded on improvisation. It is complex and unpredictable; it ebbs and flows and draws on the artist’s mood on any given day — and the inclusion of a jazz set in the Laufey concert was no different. There is a comfort in knowing that no one except for the people in the arena that night heard this specific version of the songs she performed that day; it is a unique closeness, a shared experience that cannot be replicated. And for someone who’d already seen her once on the Bewitched tour, the unique flavor to the performance of “Valentine” and “While You Were Sleeping” felt like I was hearing these songs for the very first time.
Acts III and IV kept the magic going, focusing almost entirely on Laufey’s newest album, with a few hits from Bewitched. “Carousel,” the first song of this concert’s second half, defines the feelings I associate with the rest of the concert: carefree, nostalgic, almost daydream-like. My personal favorites were “Mr. Eclectic” (the perfect balance between sass and bitterness) and “Castle in Hollywood” (a wistful musing on losing friends and growing old). The playfulness continued even through songs such as “Tough Luck,” where I got to see Laufey spinning on the clock-like portion of the stage during one of the most iconic bridges of the whole album.
Her spell never subsided, and that feeling of specialness came back during the surprise song, “Questions for the Universe,” off Everything I Know About Love (Deluxe Edition). I hadn’t heard the song in years, and listening to it with just Laufey and a piano was almost enchanting. It was the perfect segue into her final song of the night, “Letter To My 13 Year Old Self,” a poignant epistolary to her childhood self, with lyrics that soothed my own insecurities.
After attending Laufey’s Philadelphia concert, I was left with the same feeling I experienced after the first time I saw her in D.C. during the Bewitched tour: love, loss and, above all, the desire to wear an ornate ballgown and experience life through a movie screen.
