Lizzy McAlpine @ The Riv
As I walked into The Riviera, deja-vu hit me immediately; the last time I was here was to see Dodie, and the opener was Lizzy McAlpine. Now, here I was covering her stop in Chicago on her sold-out “The End of the Movie” tour.
There were mother-daughter pairs and herds of young girls reacting at each shift in the lights on stage as the crew scurried around the stage. The air felt sparkly and I could feel the energy radiating off of each concert-goer. For many of these tweens, it was probably their first concert. It was sweet seeing this on such a microscopic level.
The stage was set up in a unique and inviting way, with a cozy green couch and framed posters lining the back wall. As I scanned the posters, I spotted an Indiana Jones poster, the artwork for Beauty and the Beast Broadway musical, and the poster for the movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The stage also featured two fake windows, giving the impression of a midwestern living room. It almost felt like we were crashing an after-school practice session of a band preparing for an upcoming Battle of the Bands. The ambiance was further enhanced by the playlist of early 2000s-2010s pop songs playing in the background, adding to the warm and fuzzy feeling.
When the lights fell dark, the screams that erupted from this crowd were nothing short of ear-splitting. Since it was such a small venue, it was heavily concentrated and potent. I saw the shock on Lizzy’s face in reaction to the crowd as she started off singing “an ego thing” a capella. She has a soft and gentle voice on her records, but as a performer she was bold and powerful; it was observable that she was relaying these songs with a live audience in mind, singing them more forcefully than on the studio recordings. This was most notable in her song “erase me”, where the drums were heavier in the live version, and I could feel the bass in my chair.
With a guitar in hand, she hurriedly and earnestly talked to the crowd between songs, professing her thanks. Not always sure how to fill the time, she would quickly launch into the next song. She took the form of a pop star in an unassuming white t-shirt and baggy jeans.
Before her song “doomsday”, the song I was most excited to see live, she giggled through the first few lines out of disbelief. She must have felt the force of every single person in the room singing along at the top of their lungs at her.
There were many pairs of best friends around me, and I noticed multiple cute moments where they would turn to each other and yell a particular line, grasping onto each other’s arms as if their lives depended on it. The energy of singing a song with your best friend could power a few nuclear power plants.
Before her song “ceilings”, which has had immense recent success on TikTok, there was an interlude of rain noises, the windows flashed and the lights on the stage flickered as if there was a raging storm on the outside. It was a really effective theatrical element that added to the drama of the song.
Lizzy seemed very approachable, almost as if she was plucked from this crowd of people and was forced on stage. She was like that incredibly friendly girl in your English class that was also an incredible writer, but wasn’t pretentious - like, what couldn’t she do?
She played two new songs that will be on her next album. One was called “broken glass”. She said it was, “about seeing someone for who they truly were”. It was a bit more rock-influenced than her other discography and sounded like a cousin to her other song “firearm” which was another standout on her most recent album, five seconds flat.
She didn’t do a traditional encore, by leaving the stage and then “shockingly” coming back to sing a few more. Lizzy commented how weird that tradition was and just launched into her encore without any hesitation.
Her tour is sold-out, but if you have tickets you’re in for a treat. If not, check out her music, especially her most recent album five seconds flat and dive into one of the most exciting singer-songwriters of the moment.