Live Review: Alice Glass at The Fonda Theatre

marv watson November 3rd, 2022 - 11:00 AM

Los Angeles, 29 October 2022; On the eve of Halloween, Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre hosted Alice Glass’ TraumaBond tour as it neared its completion. Given Ms. Glass’ aesthetic on her recent debut album cover, Halloween seemed a fitting time to witness her solo show.

Local drag act Abhora made a brief appearance immediately prior to Ms. Glass’ set, appearing on stilts in a ghoulish costume to the backdrop of Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.” Surreal and spooky indeed.

A few minutes late, the curtains raised, and out crawled Alice Glass to take up her place in the center of the stage to frenzied hollering and cheers. Given Ms. Glass’ infamous statement about a certain ex-band-member in 2017, the audience was definitely here in support of her, as well as being here for the music.

Without going in-depth to analyze her lyrical matter on her solo outing “PREY/IV,” which addresses, full-on, the abuse outlined in the aforementioned statement, taking the stage and performing this material in front of hundreds of fans demonstrates a huge show of strength on her behalf, and Alice Glass is not one to shy away from the spotlight. Performing under a gloomy, mostly backlit stage, with just one other person on stage managing the music and live instrumentation, she commands the large space like it’s nothing.

Aside from performing the bulk of her debut LP, including stand-out tracks such as “THE HUNTED” and “BABY TEETH,” she also makes a statement of owning her past, in executing some tracks from the Crystal Castles days, notably “Alice Practice” and “Celestica.” The latter, naturally, go down to huge applause.

To highlight just how much this show means to her, she heads to stage-left at one point, mid-song, and throws up off the side of the stage; aside from laughing it off after the song ended, she carried on as if nothing happened, and finished the show. Lesser folk would be forgiven for calling it a night there and then, but then Alice Glass is not your average rock star, she’s telling us in many ways, “I’m here to stay.”

Setlist:

01. PREY

02. PINNED BENEATH LIMBS

03. NIGHTMARES

04. Alice Practice

05. FAIR GAME

06. Without Love

07. White Lies

08. Blood Oath

09. Celestica

10. BABY TEETH

11. SUFFER AND SWALLOW