REVIEW: MIYA FOLICK @ BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL 10/6
By Lucy McCabe
When I walk in, Brighton Music Hall is lit like a cave. Its features are outlined with the welcoming glow of cool colored stage lights. The rotating soft blues, purples, reds, and pinks go on to swim through each song effortlessly.
Miya Folick was born and raised in California. She lives and records in Los Angeles, CA. Like every industrious young musician today, she formed her first band via Tinder. This was back in 2013, and since then she has never stopped being active as a musician.
Her recent collaborations include a feature on American Football’s cover of Fade into You, released in 2022. At 34, Folick contains multitudes and certain wisdoms her younger industry colleagues have yet to grasp. She wields her strengths with a self-possessed duality, ranging across genres and decades.
The tungsten-yellow hues color Miya’s white t-shirt as soon as she comes onto the stage. Throughout the night I was able to witness how she bounced between the different facets of her artistry. The first three songs played, “Nothing to See”, “Bad Thing”, and “Cockroach” come straight from her latest album, Roach. The cutting lyrics sought, pleadingly, to understand her shortcomings in love. This anguish builds to the latter half of “Cockroach”- Crush me / Crush me – sung tenderly to a soft backdrop of drums.
Spanning the entire set list, roughly half of her time on stage was dedicated to Roach. This other half included an even fresher release, “What We Wanna” (out just two days prior). Miya described it as a “bratty” song she just wrote for an original Apple TV series, The Buccaneers. She even let the audience in on the process of polishing the song, with a lyric change from “hot and wet” to “hot as it gets”, per the request of the series’ creative team.
Towards the end of her set, Get Out of My House floods the speakers. The hall becomes a dynamic exchange of energy between performers and patrons, the currency consisting of breathy lyrics and expressions of pure admiration. It’s something every concert goer hopes to feel, to be able to think to themselves, god that was a good show, right before they exit the venue’s double doors onto a gum speckled sidewalk.
I watched the excited chatter between the fans shuffling out after Miya’s last song, a cover of Joni Mitchell’s River. Maia, the band’s bassist, and drummer, Elias, left and came to the side of the stage where I was, filming her with their smartphones. The venue fell into an expectant silence, and Miya began.
She held the high notes with a hushed precision, this song gave her an opportunity to display her full range of talents. I held the image of a lone skater gliding down a winding, frozen river with a sky the same color of the Blue album itself. Silence, then the trance is broken. It’s back to cheering, clapping and maybe even some tear wiping.