Concert Review: Kate Bollinger Lulls The Mercury Lounge Crowd
Kate Bollinger’s music hits you like a dolce lullaby on repeat or a massage that revived you so much you feel strangely calm. She laughingly asked, quite a few times, “Is anybody asleep or falling asleep?” The Mercury Lounge crowd was so quiet, you could hear the beer being poured in the back. Hushing a crowd of New Yorkers is a MAJOR feat, but, truthfully, who doesn’t want silence?
Okay, I’m about to get really descriptive, but Kate Bollinger’s music is the most exoteric esoteric charm you will hear, in part, because she plays to the moments when you want to be actively blank. I am talking about the times when you want to be pensive, but you don’t want to think or overthink, and you want to feel but not get sentimental or overly emotional. In essence, she makes the sad songs that don’t make you cry and the happy songs that don’t make you leap for joy. That may sound bad or insulting, but the truth is that it is peaceful and balancing. Her tracks struck everyone like a crystal wand aligning their chakras; everyone walked out clearer and cleansed from always having heightened feelings and thoughts.
If there is one place on earth where you will probably go through ideas and sentiments as if you were rummaging through 20 million boxes of tissue paper in one day…. It’s New York! This city is globally known as a place where you can hustle to your dreams, which means we get a lot of hustlers. Yet, for New Yorkers who live here, we know the grind can just stay at a grind. It can feel more like a hamster wheel than a wheel of fortune, and that is why Kate Bollinger’s show was so packed: when everything is either the highest high or the lowest low, sometimes, just being on simple, settled ground can be breathtaking. Tracks like, “Shadows” and “Grey Skies,” felt like the joy one has at finally being able to decompress and quiet down from a rough day. Is that a strange compliment?
Maybe, it is because I am a Puerto Rican living in New York so I am used to “go big or go home” that I am trying to really convey how it felt nice and different to experience someone that says neither. At Kate’s show, it was not about being lavish or least as much as appreciating how good it is to be okay. Fine can be enough, and, with a good song, it can even feel rich. For More Information On Kate Bollinger Click Here.
