It’s a Wednesday night, and Theatre Beanfield is ablaze with an effervescent crowd. The excited throng hosts a fashionable cornucopia of styles, femmes dressed to the nines, twinks in homemade Slayyyter merch, but not a clean girl in sight.
The jovial crowd assembles, Pearly Drops emerges. Doused in their signature mysterious Scandinavian swag and bug-core sunglasses, they deliver an unexpectedly embodied performance. Their enigmatic aura works in tandem with their inviting stage presence, an invitation to ascend to their ethereal sound with them rather than simply bearing witness. Their layered sound goes down easy, like eating an oil pastel the sounds smudge and blur amplified by the warmth of their on-stage presence. Returning to their trademark “Pearly Drops” sound bite as a reminder to come back to earth between each song.
The audience is glittering and rabid in their anticipation for Slayyyter. The stage is set with a trailer park-inspired backyard complete with a laundry line and faux wild grass lining the edge of the stage. She saunters through the door of the facade, utterly radiant. She proceeds to play an epic set that encompasses the entirety of WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. Backed up by a live band, the energy of each song is amplified, and her vocals shine through with perfect clarity.
Marrying fuck you energy, airy vocals with the urgency of live drums, “OLD FLING$” and “WHATS IT LIKE, TO BE LIKED?” stood out in the set. Her refined live vocals on “CANNIBALISM!” and “UNKNOWN LOVERZ” brought new depth to the tracks. While I couldn’t tell you exactly how many times I cried during her performance, I can confidently report that I was a mess during “BRITTANY MURPHY” which she dedicated to the audience. One of the crown jewels of this record, it so radiantly synthesizes the aesthetics of the whole record into a devastating barn burner. The live performance was no exception. Following a loose three-act structure, the audience is also treated to three costume changes, further adding to the feeling that this is Slayyyter’s moment.
The enraptured audience knows the record with embodied conviction, the voices of the crowd reflecting Slayyyter’s lyrics at her. The WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA tour will surely be one of many moments of punctuation in Slayyyter’s expansive career as her popularity continues to grow.
Photos by Deirdre Kelly (@beatsbydeirdre)
