On December 8, WAMH 89.3, Amherst College’s radio station, hosted indie rock singer-songwriter Sidney Gish at the Powerhouse for a show open to all Five College students.
Despite taking place in Amherst, the attendees seemed to be mostly Smith students, as Smithies shifted the crowd due to meeting up with their friends and classmates.
The crowd quieted down once the openers from Amherst College began. Both were solo artists, singing pop ballads in the style of popular indie artists. In fact, they embraced the genre and played covers by comparable singers, including Jeff Buckley.
After two 30-minute sets, the crowd was ready for the headliner. The room echoed with cheers after the WAMH 89.3 station managers welcomed Gish to the stage.
Gish’s music resonated with the crowd of college students. Many of her songs, especially those off of her sophomore album, “No Dogs Allowed,” discuss themes such as feeling out of place in academic spaces and crashing in her dorm room after a long night. Gish wrote “No Dogs Allowed” as a senior at Northwestern.
The artist’s songs are quite wordy, due to her witty lyricism and wordplay across her discography. Nevertheless, the audience sang and danced along to every song. During her more popular numbers, like “Presumably Dead Arm,” the crowd even overpowered her voice by overwhelmingly reciting Gish’s words back at her.
The audience quieted down when Gish performed a new, unreleased song. While it still contained her same clever lyrics and upbeat background instrumentals, it felt more mature and more detached from the academic spaces detailed in her earlier works.
However, the true allure of her live performance lay in her unique way of producing her own music. Gish was on stage alone, using recordings and loop pedals to sound like she had an entire band performing with her.
She used this creative way of building her background instrumentals to connect with fans as she asked crowd members to identify the drum samples she used and otherwise interacted with the audience.
She furthered this connection by coming back on stage for an encore, singing an older song, “Homecoming Serf,” requested by audience members.
After Gish’s hour-long set, Smithies crowded the Amherst PVTA stops, full of chatter yet ready to sleep thanks to the high energy of the show.
