Maja Lena concludes her first headline tour with a dreamy set at The Bodega...
Certain to be one of the most immersive gigs I’ve witnessed to date, Maja Lena concludes her first headliner tour with a dreamy set at The Bodega. With lockdown restrictions, Maja Lena was unable to bring her debut album The Keeper to the live setting, and hence took this UK tour as an opportunity to pay careful homage to her first project, as well as the recently released Pluto. This shared focus made for a setlist which truly celebrated the idyllic sense which straddles both albums, as well as the more formal innovations which take place in Pluto.
Three-piece band The Days of Tomorrow delivered the perfect drumroll to the headliner set with their groovy, rock-inspired riffs and an infectious use of the wah-wah pedal. When Maja Lena took the stage alongside producer and drummer Rob Pemberton, and bassist Alex Heane, the trio seemed to naturally sink into an earnest familiarity with the performance space. It becomes instantly clear as to why they were so very keen to deliver these songs to a live audience.
Opening tracks Antares and Silent Quilt established a tone which felt otherworldly, yet so intrinsically of the earth. Maja Lena’s dreamy, siren-like vocals rose and fell with great measure, a dynamic which felt reminiscent of the wavering mountain range pictured on The Keeper album art. Central to the performance was the juxtaposition between the familiar and the estranged; the natural and the unnatural; the pastoral and the cosmic.
Perhaps most striking was Maja Lena’s ability to transport her audience into the strange landscape of her imagination, constructed through layers of synthesizers and broodingly folksy vocals
There is something so visually striking about seeing a double-bass and a synthesizer on the same stage. Meanwhile, the grainy, earthy heartbeat of Pemberton’s maracas both contrasted and coalesced with the more artificial synth beats, with the lighting alternating between honey-gold and ice blue.
Perhaps most striking was Maja Lena’s ability to transport her audience into the strange landscape of her imagination, constructed through layers of synthesizers and broodingly folksy vocals. In Stone, the singer encouraged her audience to form their own interpretation, “I want you to picture your own stone, however big or small, however tangible or metaphorical.” In our conversation before the tour, Maja expressed desire to create a subjective space, “I really like it to be a sort of ‘room of requirement’ type of experience […] whether it’s just somewhere to be for a bit.”
There is certainly something to be said of rousing a small audience to sing along to a track they don’t know the lyrics to. The room overcame their bashfulness to echo the closing lyrics to No More Flowers, a sense of togetherness which felt fitting for an evening which felt more like a ritual than a gig.
To be earnest, Maja Lena’s performance at The Bodega simply left me with a bit of a dilemma; I’m not sure whether I want to live out the rest of my days in a ivy-covered cottage or throw in the towel altogether and jet off to Pluto.
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