There’s only one thing that could get me to go to Toad’s Place on a Monday: good music. The TV Girl show at Toads was one of the most anticipated shows of the fall semester, at least among my friends, and I was thrilled to have snagged tickets to the sold-out show months ago.
The show began with France-moved-LA psychedelic indie band, Pearl & The Oysters. They ran through their six-song setlist to open the evening, and although I knew none of their music prior, I was immediately enthralled with the energy they brought to the stage. Frontwoman Juliette Pearl Davis (or JuJu) enchanted the crowd, picked up a flute on multiple occasions, and encouraged us to sing along with her on the mystical choruses of “Flowerland”.
After the opening band had left the stage, the lights went down and the anticipation began to rise. Each movement of a curtain or pause between house songs garnered a full chorus of applause, only to be disappointed after a moment or two without an appearance by the band.
Following what may well have been ages in the minds of the crowd, TV Girl took to the stage. They ran through several songs uninterrupted to kick off the show, including my personal favorite, “Pantyhose”, as well as “Louise”, “Daughter of a Cop”, “Birds Don’t Sing”, and “Not Allowed”.
Their set included lots of lighting and panels meant to mimic stained glass artwork. The whole evening truly felt like scenes out of their cover artwork.
Throughout the show, lead singer Brad Petering would pause to interact with the crowd, joking around in a very self-aware sense about the ages of the fans, their TikTok fame, the not-so-positive reactions to their latest album, and the difficulties of making money as a group off of tours.
My favorite moment among all of the jesting was when Petering took a moment to quiet the crowd before reading off a mock sponsorship announcement, claiming that Mountain Dew sponsored this tour but had only paid for the backup singers to join the first half of the show before ushering them off of the stage.
As mentioned earlier, TV Girl’s latest album “Grapes Upon The Vine” wasn’t received well by fans. Personally, I really enjoyed the change in tone on this record, and I think it’s only fitting that the band switches things up a decade after they released their first EP.
However, this was certainly one of those shows where the audience had distinctly different energy levels for their favorite songs.
The oh-so TikTok famous “Lover’s Rock” has garnered over half a billion streams on Spotify, and hundreds of thousands of posts on TikTok. This song was the second to last song played in the show’s encore, but you would have guessed it was the first song of the night based off of the crowd’s reactions.
In an era of Taylor Swift’s rehearsed interactions with the crowd, and shows where the artist doesn’t stop at all through their sets, TV Girl’s jests and off-the-cuff comedy really stood out. Musically, the show was everything I had hoped for and more, the perfect blend of deep cuts and fan favorites to keep the crowd singing and dancing all night long.
