What’s better than being awash in the glow of a really good song? The second to last week of September, I find myself absorbed in the art of songwriting across two shows: Eliana Glass and Jules Reidy at Roulette and Maria Somerville and James K at Knockdown Center. Each set explores a different approach, from slow-paced jazz to the dreamiest pop, emphasizing the variance of modern “experimental” songwriting. All offer a different kind of immersion, whether it’s getting lost in rumination or found in a gossamer beat.
Eliana Glass: The silent room goes dark save for a spotlight on Eliana Glass at the grand piano playing songs from her acclaimed debut record of pensive jazz songs, E. Here, she strips the songs down to just her silken voice and the piano, sustained and softened. As she sings, her voice — flexible and velvety, colossal and nostalgic — is a weighty vehicle for meditative and diaristic writing, and much of the set feels like watching memories resurface from the deep. By the end, she shares an animated new track fueled by a surprisingly bouncy piano melody and airy vocals. It lingers, too — these are the kind of songs to which you turn, or turn to you.
Jules Reidy: Jules Reidy, their acoustic and electric guitars, and their rig of electronics stand onstage in front of a swirling spotlight that’s creating something of a halo. Besides the dazzling whirl, at the center of the set is Reidy’s guitar, which transforms from jagged edges into oozing chords. The effect is at once dizzying and exhilarating: Rippling, plucked melodies fall into puddles of radiant electronics as Reidy’s autotuned voice soars above, a flurry of energy emanating from the stage and propelled by that blurring white light. We squint our eyes and let the music in.
Maria Somerville: Maria Somerville’s songs feel dredged from the sea. At Knockdown Center, she and her band are shrouded in plumes of smoke; they look like ghostly figures from the audience, just a couple of cloaked figures with guitar necks poking out from their bodies. Her 2025 album, Luster, is a throwback dreampop, shoegaze, and ambient fantasy. Live, and perhaps rightly so considering the lineage, guitars steal the show, filling the outdoor Ruins with the resonance of fuzzy, blown-out strums. It’s the experience of a dream — not quite real yet wholly present.
James K: James K continues the dream in the Ruins, but asks us to dance to music from her latest album, Friend. Lowkey trip-hop beats buzz from the stage, cloaked in a pillowy mist. You kind of can’t help but move, and so the audience does. And when “Play” comes on at the end — one of the poppiest, most upbeat tracks on the record — the group standing next to me jumps and screams the lyrics as lights flash and cut through the nightfall. It’s a second of remembering that what matters is the beat and the people with whom you’re sharing it. Like a dream, it ends.