With her ethereal, honeydrip voice, friendly onstage demeanour, and layered guitar playing, Sofia Wolfson is clearly no stranger to opening the night or being up there all on her own. The LA-born indie songwriter looks comfortable and at ease on the Casa stage for POP Montreal’s Thursday night, opening up the night for full band acts and riotous rappers alike. But for her 30-minute set, the tone is thoroughly decided: Soft, sweet, and a little sad.
One thing that immediately sets Wolfson’s sound apart from other indie singer-songwriters is her guitar work. Complex, slightly jagged chords are constantly coming through, creating a surprisingly rich texture for her soothing, slightly forlorn vocals to reverberate off of. On tracks like “From Up Here,” she’s able to dig a little deeper, letting her near-perfect voice quiver and break just a touch, giving us a glimpse into the heartbreak and ennui that no doubt inspired its writing.
Between tracks, Wolfson comes off as confident, cool, quirky. She chats to the crowd like we’re all gathered in her living room, as though she could say anything and know we’d care for her all the same. Though I had arrived at the set pregamed and ready to thrash about, I ultimately didn’t mind a gentle sway to Wolfson and her catalogue of tragic beauty.
Fans of Soccer Mommy, Clairo, Puma Blue, and other lower-fi indie darlings will know and love Wolfson’s plain-spoken yet literary writing style, thoughtful instrumentation, and pervasive sense of peaceful melancholy.
