Jordana @ The Sinclair 2/23
Review by Isabelle Ireland
Photography by Rachel Bernstein
I had the pleasure of seeing one of my favorite artists, Jordana, perform the last show of her “Lively Premonition Tour” this past Sunday. The performance started with a big reveal of a neon yellow sign saying “JORDANA” as a backlight behind the beautiful artist. As fog spilled onto the stage, Jordana’s band began playing some strange country intro as she walked out with a huge smile.
She happily let the audience know she would be playing her newest album, “Lively Premonition” from top to bottom–which is personally my favorite way to go about a concert. Jordana then immediately picked up her viola and began playing and singing in unison. While playing the viola perfectly, she was able to consistently hit each high note with ease. She has such a soft voice but with so much power. Once she put down the viola, she was dancing in a very quirky way as warm colored lights made her face glow.
Once the song was over, she became very emotional, remembering this was her last stop on tour after playing 19 other venues in less than a month. Although she was full of bittersweet emotions, she somehow made the audience laugh between each song with inappropriate jokes and Trump impressions. Her sense of humor was uniquely paired with her genre of music, but she made it work. Plus, the jokes made the concert feel so intimate and personal: You could tell this tour was really important to her.
She next played “Like a Dog” and my eyes widened as she picked up the tambourine that had been patiently waiting next to the mic stand. The song had a very jazzy vibe. Her whole album has a wide range of genres—it really is for everybody.
Jordana had a lot of bits to break up the music. At one point, she did some very exaggerated blinking after telling a partially dirty joke. At another point, she aggressively stared at certain fans to get them to dance with her and smile. Along with hitting every high note, she was impressively able to hit very low notes in some of her songs. Halfway through her album, she told the crowd that there was one more sweet song then we could party. Jordana said, “I did my little baby sounds, now I’m gonna f**king walk around the stage like a man! No no no, there will be grace in there and some jokes, for example, there’s a fart in this song ….”
When the fart happened in the song the room filled with stink—I’m still not sure if it was part of the performance or if the person in front of me farted in my face. At the end of the song she also screamed and fell to the floor which left me baffled. Once she got up, she asked if the crowd did drugs, and told us she never went to college. She then introduced her band, two of which are Berklee alumnus, and pointed out they were the string players with glasses.
She went on to sing some more fun songs and ended with two middle fingers up and an impressive high note. Once again, her range is incredible. She then forgot her next song, asked around, picked up her guitar, and made fun of her drummer. “He’s good at the ‘dwums’ and I’m gonna miss him. He also generally doesn’t smell bad,” said Jordana while attempting to give her drummer some compliments.
She then began to blab about herself in an attempt to stall the concert because she did not want the tour to end. She talked about her theater kid days, her Broadway dreams, her chihuahua, and gave us more hilarious Trump impressions like when she said, “We don’t walk off for an encore, your time is precious to me,” which was backed by the classic Trump hand motions.
They then stood on the stage and waited for their applause as if they were leaving and coming back for an encore. “You have a hole that needs to be filled,” said Jordana, which was followed by a “damn son” audio on the keyboard because she somehow made the claim into a dirty joke. “You need to be filled with a Steely Dan cover,” which they then proceeded to play.
The last three songs are what they call “The TV Girl Trilogy.” They played “Summer’s Over,” my personal favorite, “Sweet to Dream,” and she then thanked Rachel Bobbit for opening an amazing tour. They closed with “Better in the Dark” and you could see the emotion in Jordana and her band’s faces as they finished the last few chords. They then asked the crows to take some group photos of them with the band’s phones and proceeded to take selfies with the crowd. They ended the show with a wholesome group bow. Overall, the show was amazing, hilarious, and magical. Half of the time I forgot I was reporting because I was entranced by the music. Make sure to listen to Jordana’s album, “Lively Premonition” if you want to feel something!