Framed by fake film and filtered to look like the grainy concert videos of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the opening shots of Bristol-based folk singer Fenne Lily’s live performance of new album BREACH (via Dead Oceans) transports you into an old shoegaze concert tape. It flicks through an eclectic set of images, displaying her name in magazine-lettering and the album title in birthday balloons. At a middle volume, she says, “just tell me when I can start,” and we get a few odd glimpses of the set. There’s a painting captioned “the Lord is my light and salvation” leaned against a mic stand, a framed photo, (is it her as a child?) and a bright pink wig on a baby blue mannikin with a thin silver party hat, which together makes a snout-less unicorn. And the set gets weirder the more you look at it. There are plants everywhere even though this is a lightless brick room. In front of one of the plants is something resembling a cereal box (maybe it’s a British cereal I’m not familiar with?).
It is all aggressively hipster, almost to the point of taunting itself. Where Fenne Lily wears a pair of white overalls, her drummer buttons a solid orange flannel to the top, accentuating his buzz-cut head and brown pants. And she isn’t even wearing shoes. The guitarist has something of a brown trench coat. I’m describing all this detail because it really is crucial to the image of the concert. As much as I was there to listen to Fenne Lily, I was entertained by the scenery and character of her and her bandmates, and the directing which framed them. From Lily’s backlit orange hair to the drummer’s wild facial expressions, I totally bought into this entertaining imagery.
BREACH is not an album with which I am deeply intimate, at least not to the same degree as I am with Lily’s debut album, On Hold. I have listened through BREACH many times since its release in 2020, but on the whole, it failed to wrestle On Hold from my persistent grip. But seeing Lily and her band delivers seven of BREACH’s best tracks and “Hypochondriac” to boot was quite satisfying, even to the point of me going back to listen to it again (it’s a very good album).
Lily opened with the soft-spoken “Someone Else’s Trees,” her deep voice particularly delicate and kindly asking all the noise out of the room. Having gotten me in a quiet mind, she pops on into “Solipsism,” a favorite of mine, and lets her band have a go. Between that and “Alapathy,” she shows you that she can really rock, giving herself and her sound a really sizeable presence.
Slower ballads can be difficult to translate via a filmed concert, so I was a little unsure of how “Elliott” (assumably about Elliott Smith) would go. But just when my attention began to wander, the elaborate set design came into play, providing another avenue of entertainment beyond the music.
The highlight was “Hypochondriac,” an early-2020 single that never made it onto an album. As both an apt song for the times and a downright catchy tune, it made for a wonderful addition to a set that had already surpassed the threshold into real, robust entertainment. “Berlin” and “I, Nietzsche” are brilliant songs too, and they did not disappoint when they appeared.
Just 8 tracks short, this set went by in a flash, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. On the whole, it was thoroughly entertaining, adding a dimension to the live demonstration of music often missed character. When the closing song “Birthday” wound down, I wanted to go up and shake hands with the band, who’d so let their personalities into the performance. The physical movement of each on-stage member, like the guitar player’s constant swinging and swaying, served to form such a complete concert. Whether fans are showing up to a venue, or in this case a live stream, they expect a certain amount of quirkiness, and Fenne Lily’s performance was almost overflowing with it.
Fenne Lily’s album BREACH is available across all streaming platforms including Spotify, Tidal, Bandcamp, and Apple Music. Stay connected with Fenne Lily across your favorite social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
