My main takeaway from Molly Burch’s concert at Club Dada this Sunday was that every concert could be improved by having a dog on stage. Obviously, Burch and her opener, Emily Whetstone from Van Mary, both put on a great show, but the true star of the night was Burch’s not-at-all crusty white dog Monty who sat, crawled around, and occasionally pawed at the stage during Burch’s set. Unfortunately, this isn’t a dog review website—if such a thing exists—so I will have to go into the non-canine content of the show.
Whetstone’s presence was actually a complete surprise to me as she wasn’t the original opener. Fellow Austin musician Christelle Bofale was originally intended to open for Burch on the whole tour, but after catching COVID, Bofale had to sit out the first few Texas dates. Whetstone was tapped at the last minute to replace Bofale and although her set included some understandable flubs and awkward moments as she tried to adjust from performing in larger bands to doing a set almost entirely on her own, it was still a rewarding treat for the handful of crowd members who got to the venue early enough to hear her set.
I found myself really enjoying Whetstone’s mix of rock and folk influences. During her heavier songs, she sounded comparable to an artist like Courtney Barnett or My Woman-era Angel Olsen. Although most of the songs Whetstone performed were written for her band Van Mary, some were from her country side project Harry and Emmy. On these songs she adopted a slight twang and leaned further into her folksy sound. The short, obviously hastily thrown-together set still managed to convert me into a fan, and since the concert I have been obsessively listening to Van Mary’s “Ennui” and “Poppy.” I feel bad that Whetstone apparently delayed going to her brother’s wedding to perform at this small venue for a roughly twenty person crowd, but I hope she finds comfort in the fact that she at least gained one loyal fan that night.
After Whetstone’s set, the crowd started to grow to the small, but not too small level that I have come to expect from Club Dada shows. Although during the opening set, most of the crowd hovered in the back of the venue, people started to move forward once Burch, her band made up of Dailey Toliver on keys and guitar, Benjamin Dubois on bass and guitar, Thom Washburn on drums, and, most importantly, Monty got on stage. I have never seen phone cameras be brought out as fast as they were once the crowd realized that there was a dog! at the concert! wearing small pink ear protection!
Burch’s set itself was surprisingly short for a headliner, only forty-five minutes long. Of the ten songs she played, eight were from her newest album Daydreamer, which was only released the Friday before the concert. This was slightly alienating to a crowd of people who primarily knew her older music, especially considering Daydreamer adopts a much poppier, 80s-synth sound than her earlier folk and jazz-influenced albums. The couple of older songs she played, including one of her biggest songs “To the Boys” off of her 2018 album First Flower, both received really positive audience responses. In fact, when she announced that she would be performing the 2020 stand-alone single “Needy,” the girl standing next to me in the crowd yelled a very earnest “thank you” at the stage and proceeded to flawlessly mouth each of the lyrics.
Hopefully, even the fans that had not found time in the two days since its release to listen to Daydreamer still enjoyed Burch’s excellent live renditions of the new album’s songs. It was really interesting to see Burch, whose style has at times been so minimalist and stripped-down, bring these lavish pop songs to life using a mix of live instrumentation from her band and pre-recorded backing tracks. Burch is also just an exceptionally talented singer and these new songs gave her a lot of room to flex her skills. My favorite performances of the night were the ever-groovy lead single of Daydreamer, “Physical,” and “Beauty Rest,” which featured a perfect blending of Burch’s vocals, the ornate strings of the backing track, and Toliver’s performance on keys.
It wound up being an unexpectedly short night as I exited the venue at 10pm, but one full of good, semi-local (Burch tragically moved from Austin to LA earlier this year) music. If the next concert I go to doesn’t have an equally cute dog hanging out on the stage adorably wearing ear protection, I will be extremely disappointed.
