San Francisco (via PDX and Virginia) singer Thao Nguyen was like a gleaming ball of light onstage, backed by her band the Get Down Stay Down, who were shimmering independently behind her. Although they were situated tonight on the relatively small Echo stage, there was nothing small about the performance that night: it was smart and jazzy pop/rock with a kind of sweet and sexy cowgirl sadness that matched welcome roughness to wild beauty. (Think of a piece of unpolished gold.) Nguyen is radiant—almost spilling into you as she plays, a glorious mess of hair, skin and technicolor dress—and a particularly young front row cooed approvingly up at her as she played. Though she’s only 24, her lyrics dispense an amazing amount of truth and wisdom and walloping wit—songs so sharply observed that it’s almost as if she’s telling your future. Her voice seems to slip through the octaves, as if she’s splitting every syllable in her lyrics, and live it’s like watching bubbles fill up a bathtub. When she performs, it’s raw interaction between elements, and as the sound of her words hit you, you’ll see stars.
—Gab Chabran