Despite the snow and two shows, the Canadian Singer-Songwriter was in top form on Saturday night.
Early yesterday evening, Ralph took to Twitter to let her fans know that her two headlining shows at the Mercury Lounge were still on. It had dumped over half a foot of snow in New York last night, and the city had largely hunkered down. But slowly and surely, despite the impediments, a sizeable crowd turned out for her shows.
Opening act Baker Grace was a surprisingly small pull – with over 50 million Spotify streams to her name (a few million more than Ralph herself) one would’ve expected more of a turnout. But the crowd before her was skimpy, and her set was relatively mute to match. After the low-key opening set, patrons huddled in just before midnight for their headliner.
Despite performing a full set immediately before, Ralph was in prime condition. Her voice never faltered, pristine like porcelain in every part of her range. While her songs are generally a light load vocally, she still nailed each song without much effort, relishing the soprano high notes like icing on cake. Strutting between the stuttered trills of “Last Time” and the disco heartbreak of “Tommy,” there wasn’t a hint of fatigue in any part of her show.
Ralph displayed an astonishing charisma and personality across each of her songs and their synthpop love affairs. She filled the spaces with witty elaboration and banter, never missing the chance to riff off the crowd like a comic, truly enjoying her performance almost as much as the audience. While the set only offered up one ballad, the barrage of dance tracks was a marvelous soundtrack to a Saturday evening.
With tickets going for just $10 a piece, her performance was worth four times that.
Listen to Ralph’s Gradience EP below.
