Lucius lead The Current’s 19th Anniversary at First Avenue in harmonious fashion
by Macie Rasmussen and Laura Buhman
January 29, 2024
Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe, the lead vocalists and songwriters of Lucius, spent two nights synchronously singing and dancing at First Avenue. Thursday was the first stop on a tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut album, Wildewoman, and Friday was a unique evening to celebrate The Current’s 19th anniversary. Coincidentally, Wolfe shared onstage, she and Laessig have been singing together for 19 years.
When announcing the tour, Lucius posted on Instagram: “To celebrate a decade, we’re playing the album front to back plus some special additions! It’ll be a colorful, sweet, nostalgic time.” Lucius are one of several bands touring to celebrate album anniversaries recently. Last fall, Liz Phair dedicated her time on the road to the 30th anniversary of Exile in Guyville, Green Day will tour to celebrate 30 years of Dookie and 20 years of American Idiot this summer, and Weezer have hinted at a Blue Album tour later this year.
It seems as though artists revisit old work not only to honor significant timestamps in their careers, but also for the comfort of nostalgia when it’s hard to confront the present. (See: The Mean Girls musical film, the Hunger Games prequel, the Barbie movie, etc.). As Dazed states in an article about the abundance of reboots, “If the future is what we fear, then the past must be revisited at any cost, even if it can feel morally duplicitous.”
In Lucius’ case, the return to Wildewoman felt joyful with songs filled with sinuous harmonies of liberation. Hope emerged between the songs’ softer moments and their buoyant swells of '80s disco beats. Instead of a front-to-back return to the album, Friday night’s setlist spanned the band’s whole catalog — with choice Wildewoman highlights mixed in.
Beyond catchy pop hooks, glitzy and sugary synths, and occasional gospel-infused folk, much of Lucius’ appeal comes from Laessig and Wolfe’s theatrical appearance onstage: mirror-image haircuts, identical makeup, and outfits matching from head to toe. Singing the whole set in tight harmonies, the two were artistically inseparable. When not side-stepping in sync, or hitting drums simultaneously, as they did on “Tempest,” Laessig and Wolfe maintained a strong connection. They followed a choreographed routine to place hands on chests and trace hearts with pointer fingers in the air for a song with twinkling keys, “Heartbursts.” The audience followed suit.
The duo made themselves at home in any tempo, staring into each other's eyes on the ballad “Man I’ll Never Find,” and smiling into the cheering crowd between anthemic “oohs” on “Until We Get There” — a shaker in Laessig’s hand and a tambourine in Wolfe’s.
Lucius debuted “Housewarming,” a song originally written for Wildewoman, last week on The Current’s morning show. When Jill Riley asked why the song written over a decade ago feels relevant to now, Wolfe explained that the significance of the lyrics feel deeper now that they do know what it’s like to create a home, on and off the road. “What truly makes a house a home wherever you are?” Riley asked. “I think familiarity. You know, comfortability because you know the people so well, you can be, you know, sort of unguarded,” Wolfe responded. “Which is love,” Laessig added.
The singers told Riley they predicted the Mainroom shows would feel like a housewarming, and on Friday, the sold-out venue’s audience implicitly pulsated with love and anticipation. The week of the shows, voices buzzed, at least in my workplace, with talk of the band's visit. Although formed in Brooklyn and now based in Los Angeles, it would be reasonable to call Lucius a Twin Cities band not from the Twin Cities.
The most heartwarming moment of the night happened when Laessig carried a mailbox full of handwritten notes from fans onstage. The singers took turns reading pages aloud, including one about listening to the band in times of mourning, and another saying, “At first, I didn’t know Lucius. Then I saw Lucius. Adjectives flowed. Stupefied and also sublime. But not the band Sublime because I’m not a millennial.” People laughed loudly. Wolfe read a letter saying, “Wildewoman is an invitation back to that young girl whose curly hair was never quite in place; to that middle school teen, shy and wondering when she was going to find her people.”
After a nostalgic main set, the show’s encore shifted to an optimistic look toward the future. The band — Wolfe, Laessig, drummer Dan Molad, guitarist Peter Lalish, as well as touring members Jacob Peters, Jeff Taylor, and Alex Pfender — exited the stage and shortly after formed a circle in the middle of the crowd to play “Two of Us On the Run.” The band strummed calming acoustic chords as Laessig and Wolfe sang about the strength and endurance it takes to move on from stages of life — the good and the bad — and what remains in our minds when we do so: “Our favorite parts are what we'll keep / Ornamental parts of love and parts of memories / So everything else has room to grow / Cause in better light, everything changes.” They concluded by singing, “One day tell our story / Of how we made something / We made something of ourselves,” which felt like Lucius sharing their belief that a future does exist with the people surrounding them in the Mainroom.
Before Lucius, the Twin Cities musician Berit Dybing, performing as Ber, filled fun, sometimes angsty, pop hooks with joyful and carefree energy. Dybing recently took the stage for First Avenue’s Best New Bands show, and appeared shocked and delighted to be back. She announced that many of her songs, the ones she wrote when taking herself too seriously, are satirical and for the purpose of making herself laugh. When singing the sarcastic line “Everybody needs a slutphase / While they're young and hot” on “Slutphase,” she asked a largely millenial/Gen-X crowd to sing along, to slightly awkward effect. Some new, unreleased songs she played touched on a situationship (“I got a boy, but he’s not a boyfriend”) and the desire to hit an ex with a car, pretending he’s a deer.
First on stage was Abraham Alexander, whose smile shone bright as he strapped his acoustic guitar around himself. The songwriter’s tight-knit riffs and elaborate string work looked effortless and worthy of the loud applause he received as he peered into the crowd. “We got some fam in the house,” he said. Alexander’s rich vocals laid over rock/R&B sound were especially powerful when he stepped back from the mic to roar, “I’ve been burned by the fire / Now I dance in the flame” on “Blood Under the Bridge.” Speaking to The Current, he said, “Thank you for believing in me and amplifying voices like myself.”
Setlist
A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes (from Cinderella)
Feels Like a Curse
Tempest
Next to Normal
Nothing Ordinary
Until We Get There
Stranger Danger
The Man I’ll Never Find
Dusty Trails
Housewarming
Teardrop (Massive Attack with Elizabeth Fraser)
Madness
Heartbursts
How Loud Your Heart Gets
Genevieve
Encore
Two of Us on the Run
Goodbye (Mary Hopkins)