Maude Latour & MARIS at the Royale

      In the past few years, I've grown accustomed to two more ways of learning about musicians.  Those smaller scale daytime sets at music festivals, and the opening acts at concerts.  Okay.  Technically, any festival musician performing a set before that day's respective headliner is relatively a headliner in their own right.  I learned who Fletcher is because she performed a set between the Aces and Alanis Morissette at Boston Calling '23.  In a nesting doll sequence, learned about Maude Latour because she opened for Fletcher last year.  This is an important part of the live music industry in that artists help lesser known artists get the exposure to help them thrive.  In early March, I learned that Maude was headlining at the Royale in Boston.  Through the Fletcher show, I knew a friend who would be interested.  I thought that I had another event on Tremont Street for that same night, but I felt it important to share that Maude was coming back to Boston.  As I started getting e-mail notifications regarding Alton Brown's touring live show, I realized that the events were on separate nights. I got a ticket for Latour's concert.

      In case anyone's wondering, Alton's live show was a fun interpretation of his "Good Eats" TV series, but was more generalized than I was expecting.  Like an occasional episode, it was about a broader subject.  As if it was a song title, one could call it "Alton Brown (feat. Thermodynamics)".  It was still a great time of nerding out over "food applied to heat".  I guess that it would have been more of a lecture series format that calls of for Alton Brown live shows individualized to feature different foods each night.  This sketch is from when Alton was demonstrating (SPOILER WARNING) heat transference between coffee and a cup in a spacial "system".  All through the weekend, I was still on an emotional high.  There weren't any yeast puppets, but Alton's creativity also developed a novel idea visual aid in demonstrating the transition of water from liquid to vapor.

      I started psyching up for Maude Latour's show the night before.  Listening to her music, planning my itinerary, more carefully managing the battery use of my phone throughout the day.  At lunch, I looked up who the opening act was, and was happily surprised to see the name "MARIS" come up.  When I saw MARIS's set at Boston Calling 2024, I recognized her potential stardom.  I tried purchasing a MARIS tee shirt, but they were had already sold out.  That Friday in May, I didn't know who Chappell Roan is, but I could tell that MARIS (like the Beaches a year before her) was one hit album from global recognition.  MARIS had actually been on my mind.  Her song "Julia Roberts" is regularly on my YouTube mix playlists  Writing about Tiffany's City Winery show, I thought that this would've been a ripe moment for MARIS to have a gig as an opening act.  A big part of her stage presence celebrates the 80's shopping mall concert pop star wave that included Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, and Paula Abdul.  Factor in her incredible ability as a belter (reminding me of Irene Cara, Laura Branigan, and Whitney Houston".  The very Gen X crowd at the Tiffany show would likely embrace the 25 year-old as someone to bring back that old Top 40 vibe.

      Opening for Maude Latour provides MARIS with the opportunity to reach younger audiences with modern lyrical work with sharing a more retro esthetic and vocal style.  This was exemplified with the first  performance of her set when getting the audience to sing along in a cover of Whitney Houston's "Somebody Who Loves Me".  I had been familiar with many of the songs from MARIS's Boston Calling '24 set.  Maris brought that time displaced 80's icon vibe that I love about her stage presence.  The setlist gave me a deeper understanding of her songs "Chameleon" and "Heavenly Bodies".  The songs are undoubtedly catchy, but the more times I listen, the more I understand the romance, and love described n the songs.  The newly released "Give Me A Sign".  It's more sensual and empathetic than Billy Joel's waiting for "Virginia" to give him a sign in "Only the Good Die Young".  MARIS is waiting for the woman she likes to give her a clear enough signal so that they can even hold one another.  The level of intimacy is still there but there's an added layer of empathy. The whole desire for a clearer sign is sadly paired with the understanding of why the other person is hesitant about expressing their feelings.  

      At this early stage of her career, MARIS's song catalog comes from singles and 20-minute EP albums.  I'm sure that MARIS will start recording full length albums in time.   Latour has advanced to that stage of an "LP release, her first full length album "Sugar Water".  For Maude, is the first time where 40+ minutes of her work has been collected to form one cohesive product.  The difference between EP's and LP's starts when you statistically compare the measurements of runtime.  The more that people consider musicians with several albums, they may take for granted the effort and work that each of those LP's individually represent.  Francoise Hardy prolifically recorded 32 studio albums through her career, and each is special.  For artists just gaining recognition, releasing a first "album" is a tremendous achievement.

     Maude's set included alot of crowdwork, and celebrating the joy of the moment with the audience.  A squirt gun, a veil, journeying out into the middle of the crowd.  The music was great, but I think that more emphasis was placed on ambience and heightening the collective mood in the room.  It was through a deeper dive into "Sugar Water" that I understood Latour's creative thesis for the album.  "What is 'Sugar Water' about?"  It's apparently about a shared rise to an emotive high.  My analysis of the set hit that close to the bullseye.  Yes, it's lyrically specifying about a summer at age 15, and every one at the Royale had some experience of that age.  For me, summer at 15 meant my first months painting murals for the city of Boston.  My first mural still stands after many years.  Upon completion at that wall, my team joined forces with another group at the parking lot for Roxbury Community College.  The wall was huge, and I had one week at that site before a family vacation to New Hampshire.  My moment of elation, and bonding was with this really cool girl just out of high school.  Let's call her "Naomi".  I met a handful of artists who were graduating out of the mural program that summer, but this particular young woman had a particular impact on me.  I was socially awkward and pinged some people's queerdars and this person took me under her wing for a week!  I hadn't started journaling, so after many years, I remember her name, looking up to Naomi, and feeling so accepted.  Maude speaks of Williamsburg Bridge bicycle rides on the handlebars and sugar cubes.  At such a young age, do teens drop a little acid, and I'm just naive?  Our bicycle was a scaffolding platform some 10-ish feet off the ground.  Our sugar cubes was Fiona Apple's "Tidal" album.  We played it on loop with a Diskman and a pair of speakers.  I got my own copy of "Tidal" when in college.  Even when replaying the tracklist on YouTube, I think back to August afternoons painting on a scaffold.  Naomi was my "cosmic superstar girl".  That mural has since been painted over, I don't know what became of Naomi but I have "Tidal" and those vague memories.  

      Thank you Maude Latour for reminding me of that summer.  I'm sure that "Sugar Water" had that same nostalgic effect n many other listeners.  I'm looking forward to both of these young women to build careers in the music industry.