By Genny Sheara
Sabrina Song kicked off her cross-coastal tour in support of Caroline Ades in Seattle on Saturday, Nov. 1st. The city welcomed the Brooklyn-based artist with a rare warm November evening and a crowd of young concert-goers huddled in the Barboza basement.
Aftershow had the pleasure of conducting a brief interview with Song via email, where she reflected on the coming journey from Seattle back home.
“I think starting on the west coast is helping really solidify the scope of the tour. This is my first full-length tour, so I’m just excited to work our way across the country and back. It’ll make the Brooklyn show in a few weeks feel really lived-in and special, especially since it’s already sold out!” Song wrote. “Every venue is definitely going to set a completely different tone, but my goal is to just be present each night and embrace each crowd.”
Sabrina showcased her talent as a multi-instrumentalist, weaving between guitar, bass, and piano seamlessly for each song. She was accompanied by one other band member who alternated between bass and guitar as well, and a backing track on her laptop. While this setup is certainly common among independent songwriters and lends itself to the bedroom pop genre aesthetic, it would be a treat to see these songs realized with a full live band.
Thankfully, this hope is likely not unrealistic, as Song has frequently collaborated with other artists on their work and her own throughout her career. “Yes Man,” a track off her most recent album was co-written with singer-songwriter Emma Rose Botti, and the album itself was co-produced with fellow Brooklyn-based artist Torna.
“I think that’s the best part of working on other people’s projects is that it scratches a completely different itch than making my own music. My songwriting process is very spontaneous and insulated – I tend to write full songs very quickly and then slowly shape them over time, and it's usually coming from a pretty tender and private place for me. I feel like my role for others is more to help finish their puzzle and give them a safe space to try new things and fulfill their vision.”
Though the duo may have been small in numbers, they certainly were not lacking in energy. The crowd hugged the lip of the stage, transfixed on the music; it was one of the few concerts in recent memory where I saw more people dancing and watching than recording on their phones.
The set was composed mainly of tracks off of Song’s new (and first ever!) full-length album, “You Could Stay in One Spot, and I’d Love You the Same.” While they certainly carried some hallmarks of the indie, singer-songwriter sound— some songs’ percussive elements particularly conjure an Ingrid Michaelson feel— the music has a power and momentum that sets Song apart from her peers. As someone who will always be a rocker at heart, “It Was Not a Beautiful Night,” which concluded the show, was especially a standout.
Impressively, Song noted that the album came together quickly, in part funded by a grant from the NYC Women’s Fund.
“I had been collecting a small pool of songs that felt like they belonged on a project together, and once I found out that I had received a grant to fund the album, I quickly wrote the other half. All of the songs came from a period where I felt things were changing very quickly in my life, but I was becoming more and more comfortable with myself as I grew into adulthood. I wanted to explore how my relationships were evolving and how I was coping with this period of growth post-grad,” Song wrote.
Even after the show, as I hurriedly added Song’s songs to my Spotify library, one moment from her set lingered in my mind: the teenage audience member in front of me, overcome by the music, started to dance, before looking around at the more mellow crowd swaying around him, and stopped. Much of Song’s lyricism speaks to this young adult uncertainty— “Me, a nervous wreck, with my blinders on” from “Happy to Be Here,” for example. But Song was able to do something all the more extraordinary: the performance and the music were so strong that he started dancing again and kept dancing anyway. Soon enough, the rest of us joined him too.
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