Review: Fenne Lily @ Thekla
By Ruby Rogers, Third Year English
Melancholic lyrics, heartfelt chords and gritty riffs - Bristol based singer-songwriter Fenne Lily returns to a sold out Thekla for an evening of mellow indie ambience on the Bristol leg of her BREACH tour.
On a brisk, wintry November evening, Fenne Lily returned to Thekla to alleviate the cold with her hazy, amorous vocals and gentle downbeat guitars for the Bristol leg of her BREACH UK tour. Across her winter tour she has played a series of intimate yet reputable venues. Illuminated by hues of indigo and violet, the neon shades of blue served as the perfect complementary juxtaposition for the warm tunes played by Fenne and her band.
In support were Langkamer and Katie Malco, who both beautifully set the tone of the evening with emotive lyrics and crunchy guitar riffs: an appropriately cool preface for headliner Fenne. Opening with ‘Someone Else’s Trees’, Fenne charmed the softly swaying crowd with the sound of a dreamy and gentle acoustic guitar and velvety progressive rhythms, which effortlessly transitioned into ‘Car Park’.
‘Hypochondriac’ slightly shifted the calmness of the crowd with its radiant, up-tempo beats and lyrics. It served as the first of a set of rose-tinted, self-reflective dialogues which we see Fenne explore on BREACH, themes carried through to tunes such as ‘Alapathy’. It was evident in the crowd that Fenne’s music had really fulfilled a sense of empathy and struck a chord with many gig-goers. On tunes such as ‘I Used To Hate My Body But Now I Just Hate You’ and ‘I, Nietzsche’, the crowd sang out as if energised with feelings of heartbreak and adolescent nostalgia.
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Almost ironically, Fenne ended the show with ‘Laundry and Jetlag’ and ‘Berlin’. These tunes were written while on tour, and explore the cathartic realisations of learning to be one with your solitude. Ending with these tracks almost felt like Fenne was leaving us with some sort of thought-provoking moral outtake, but nonetheless, after I arrived home, I put on her tunes and found her lyrics even more relatable.
Featured image: Ruby Rogers
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