When Tristen took the stage at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg on Monday, June 2nd, you might not even have known she wasn’t just one of the crowd. With her cool vintage looking dress and sweet throwback 90’s pixie cut, she looked right at home as a Brooklynite. But when she started singing with that powerful voice, she let her Nashville roots show.
Her band was comprised of guitarist Buddy Hughen, drummer Doni Schroeder (who also toured with Bobby Bare, Jr. this year) and bassist Rodrigo Avendano (who recently also appeared on Stone Jack Jones’ From Nashville with Love and Torture tour), and Tristen on guitar and keys. The band sounded fantastic, but occasionally her vocals were drowned out a bit and definitely could have been louder overall. They opened with “Eager for Your Love”, a smooth and driving 70s-ish pop tune that really shows off Tristen’s ability to hit those high notes, and it didn’t take long for the crowd to build and start dancing.
Over her lengthy set, which followed dreamy openers Siiga and Boyfriend, Tristen covered ground from all of albums, especially Charlatans at the Gate and last year’s Caves. Caves delves into 80’s power pop often, with plenty of synth and drama, and Tristen makes it all sound new and fresh. “Catalyst” is good example of this, and it sounded fantastic live, as did “Easy Out”, a pretty, slower song that hypnotizes.
By the time she got to “Doomsday”, the crowd had nearly doubled and was hooked and hanging on the band’s every move. As with “Easy Out”, Tristen rocked out a little harder live. Songs that sound like angelic harmonies on her records were belted out on stage with a smoky, Joplin-like rasp. She has true stage presence, too, getting lost in the notes of her songs, closing her eyes and giving herself over. It was clear she had some friends in the audience, too, who cheered throughout, getting everyone else more excited.
The audience danced right through the end of her set, which included single “Gold Star”, which she explained is an urban dictionary term that refers to a homosexual person who’s never had sex with someone of the opposite sex. That’s a beautiful song, and one of the softer tunes of the evening, with delicate vocals. She also played a more obscure song of hers “Bourgeois Bouquet”, which almost sounds like it could be a cover of a classic 80’s pop song, as well as “The Anti Baby”, a fun, rocking number that was impossible not to dance to; and the gangster-themed “No One’s Gonna Know”, another mischievous dance-worthy song.
Tristen flitted easily back and forth between her guitar and her keyboard, transitioning smoothly and adding a nice balance to the sounds of the band. She is also a performer who likes to dance on stage, and engage with her band mates, which gets even the wallflowers shaking their hips and swaying along. When she asked the audience to come closer toward the end of her set, and then played one of her final songs, the crowd pleaser, “Heart and Hope to Die”, no one wanted the night to end.
