Eleanor Friedberger Live at Bowery Ballroom, New York City

Eleanor Friedberger’s show at the Bowery Ballroom was a journey into intricate contemplative stories told through keen, bluesy vocals. The first thing a listener notices about Friedberger is her distinctive voice. It sounds like a combination between Jenny Lewis’ intensity and Kim Deal’s maturity. The texture of it adds so much more meaning to her performance and the way in which she delivers the lyrics make the words sincere and the message meditative.

It’s undeniable, Friedberger is a storyteller through and through. Her lyrics weave together stories about lost love, galaxy bars, web-spinning spiders and dead guys on beaches. She opened her set with “My Jesus Phase” from her newest album Rebound. A delicious, dream pop song that explores synth in a way Friedberger has not done before. Lyrically, she goes from singing about drinking whiskey to her Jesus phase. It shows her tremendous ability to alternate between conflicting themes and using unconventional imagery to construct her journey. She played another song from her newest album called “Are We Good?” The song again made an interesting departure from her typical folk sound and transitioned into the dream pop realm. The guitar had interesting, harsh textures and the drums were stripped down and repetitive.

Friedberger also peppers her songs with melancholic guitar, especially “Other Boys.” It seems as if they’d be perfectly planted in a John Hughes movie, when the two characters who are in love finally dance awkwardly with one another at the school dance. When she played “Inn of the Seventh Ray,” the biblical undertones lingered and the weight of the words carried a new, reverential meaning. “Roosevelt Island” roused the audience and Friedberger sang the horde of lyrics over the funky guitar riffs. She ended the evening with the upbeat “In Between Stars,” where the crowd nodded along and embraced all the different sounds and images Friedberger passionately performed from that stage.

Setlist:

My Jesus Phase

The Letter

Everything

Inn of the Seventh Ray

Sweetest Girl

Your Word

My Mistakes

Other Boys

Make Me a Song

Roosevelt Island

Cathy With the Curly Hair

Are We Good?

Stare at the Sun

Encore:

I Don’t Want to Bother You

In Between Stars