Let’s Eat Grandma and guest Odetta Hartman filled Fortune Sound Club with uplifting vibes last night (August 30). This was an impressive feat for two reasons. First, both acts’ styles differ. Let’s Eat Grandma craft melancholy dance pop whereas Hartman conjures spooky, stomping folk-rock. Second, neither Let’s Eat Grandma nor Hartman sing about the most uplifting subjects. Let’s Eat Grandma’s Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, who are both 19, navigate femininity and young adulthood through the filter of the technology that dominates modern life. Hartman creates compelling fragmentary songs influenced by the haunted history of the Appalachians, specifically West Virginia, where she spent her childhood holidays.

First, the affable Hartman, along with her best friend Alex Freedom, proved to be a formidable force. On top of being stomping, their songs were soulful and elemental. Field recordings of bird calls, flapping wings, ocean sounds, and blowing wind coloured the pictures the duo outlined and crosshatched with music and words. Wayfaring, lost-at-sea shanties were plentiful, like “Dreamcatchers”. Although Hartman and Freedom played a variety of instruments – guitar, banjo, and violin by Hartman and bells, chimes, drums that included electronic pads, and even a cooking pot by Freedom – the duo also looped or backtracked most of those instruments. By looping and using backtracks, Hartman created thunderous harmonies with herself.

Let’s Eat Grandma’s debut album, 2016’s I, Gemini, displayed folk influences, too. But their latest album, this year’s I’m All Ears, is purely electric. With a tight, heavy-hitting live drummer, Let’s Eat Grandma mostly performed songs from I’m All Ears. They opened the same way the album does: with the menacing “Whitewater”, followed by pop banger “Hot Pink” (which was co-produced by SOPHIE and the Horrors’ Faris Badwin), then “It’s Not Just Me”, which was chock full of squeaky synths. Up close, fans could watch how Walton and Hollingworth layered their harmonies: One voice weaved not only through the other but through the reverb that coated both, too.

Walton and Hollingworth each took turns leaving their keyboards to dance, crawl across the edge of the stage, and raise and kick their legs in the air while lying on their backs. Besides both playing keys, Walton and Hollingworth also showed off their saxophone and guitar skills. Among the songs that featured sax was their only encore, “Deep Six Textbook”. Guitar (and guitar solos) came on “I Will Be Waiting” and the undisputed hit of the night, “Donnie Darko”.
The latter was every bit the mini-odyssey that it is on I’m All Ears. Walton and Hollingworth also broke into a sloppy game of patty-cake during “Donnie Darko” and “Deep Six Textbook”, giving fans all the more reason to feel jolts of glee while being wrapped in backlit dance-pop.

review by Leslie Chu