Warpaint embraces femininity. One would think that with so many women playing in rock and pop bands today, more femininity would abound. While the feminine experience in the modern world is an infinitely expanding spectrum, this all-woman quartet captured and accentuated a musical screenshot of positive self-identification and empowerment.
Warpaint formed as an indie rock band in 2004 in Los Angeles, California. The band presently consists of original members Emily Kokal (vocals, guitar), Theresa Wayman (vocals, guitar), and Jenny Lee Lindberg (bass, vocals), with Stella Mozgawa on drums since 2009. Warpaint’s fourth and most recent studio album, Radiate Like This, was released on May 6.
Onstage at Brooklyn Made, Warpaint’s performance was a careful blend of lyrics articulating womanhood, empowerment and their interpersonal connections in the real world. The band supplemented this message with gentle vocals, swirling melodies, lush harmonies, propulsive percussion, and dance-inducing rhythms. The overall sound leaned slightly on the edgy side, yet flowed brightly thanks to warm grooves and smooth musical interplay. The end result was simultaneously haunting and hypnotic.
Amid a set of dreamy, ambient sounds and feel-good pop waves, the four musicians at one point moved away from their formation to gather center-stage around a single standing microphone. Accompanied by one acoustic guitar, the four members harmonized on a stripped down version of “Melting.” To have one person sing the lyrics would have been powerful enough, but gang vocals turned the song into a unifying, universal commiseration.
Take off your raincoat
Baby, I want to touch the skin
The only way out from this cold unknowing
Is to radiate like this
‘Cause you know my ways now
And you’re making fire in our house
And it’s melting, melting, melting me down
Rather than joining the riot grrl movement of the 1990s, Warpaint found its own path. Warpaint’s performance was less angry and aggressive than Bikini Kill‘s concert a couple of weeks earlier, for example. Warpaint expressed its frustrations and aspirations in a more sensitive and intellectual package. The message was soothing, determined, and seemingly welcomed by the mostly-female audience.
Setlist
- Stars
- Champion
- Intro
- Keep It Healthy
- Hips
- Hard to Tell You
- Love Is to Die
- Krimson
- Melting
- Stevie
- Bees
- New Song
- Disco//Very
Encore
- I’m So Tired (Fugazi cover)
- Elephants
- Beetles
- Send Nudes
