By: Josh Kitchen / May 2, 2024
Concert Review - Grace Cummings at Gold-Diggers, Los Angeles - May 1, 2024
If that quote sounds familiar it's because it's what longtime Bruce Springsteen manager and producer Jon Landau remarked when he first saw Springsteen in 1974 at the Harvard Square Theater. Landau's quote has long led to groans, even from Springsteen himself. But it's gone on to live in legend as a braggadocious way of saying you were there when something truly magical happened in front of you.
Fresh off the heels of the April release of her outstanding third album, Ramona, Australian singer-songwriter, Grace Cummings descended on East Hollywood's Gold-Diggers for an equal parts intimate and ferocious 75 minute set. For the 150 people who were lucky enough to witness it, this was the magic show Landau was talking about.
The first thing that is often written about Cummings' music is her voice. When Cummings sings it's hard to not feel it take over your entire nervous system. The Guardian described it as "elemental," going on to say, "it appears to spring from a deep well connecting her diaphragm to the massive tectonic plates below, with gravelly edges concealing its true power." To see it live is a marvel - it's intense and operatic, and equal parts gravelly and full of soul, and it is Cummings' super power. First heard on Cummings' excellent debut, 2019's Refuge Cove, and its follow-up, 2022's Storm Queen. On Ramona, Cummings takes it to another level.
Cummings hails from Melbourne, Australia, but Ramona was recorded here in Los Angeles in Topanga Canyon, and was produced by Johnathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Dawes, Angel Olsen), who helped to revive the Laurel Canyon sound in the early 2010's. The canyon looms large over Ramona, with the band even making their entrance to the stage to the Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young classic, "Almost Cut My Hair." "I wrote this song in Topanga Canyon. It's about not wanting to leave a place but also about maybe jumping into a Ferrari or somebody who looks nice," Cummings said as the lead in to the appropriately titled, "Love and the Canyon." Over 45 minutes, Ramona touches on deep feelings of regret, heartache, loss, and the demand for agency and power.
All of those feelings were on display at Gold Diggers last night. The album's second single, "Common Man" was a show highlight, with Cummings bellowing about craving the uninhibited freedom of a cowboy with just his horse and pistol by his side. "Common Man" was so raucous and intense, by the time it was over the crowd was hooting and hollering as if it was Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
The album's emotional highlight occurs during third single, "A Precious Thing." The song builds to an epic vocal crescendo, with Cummings lamenting, "Love is just a thing/That I'm trying to live without/And oh, what a precious thing/But it's nothing I care about." On the album the build is accompanied by a full orchestra and horns. Cummings played it at Gold Diggers solo with just her on the keyboard. "We can't tour with the setup we recorded the album with, so I'm going to play this by myself, like I wrote it." It was incredible.
It may be no surprise that before Cummings started to release albums professionally, she was an accomplished stage actor, and on stage at Gold Diggers, Cummings wore took on many personas. During Storm Queen's "Heaven," Cummings sang crazed, her eyes wide and feral, face contorting as she screamed refrains of "Ave maria" over and over. Throughout the night, Cummings took on the trappings of a revivalist preacher during the Basement Tapes style jam "Everybody's Somebody," where she was joined by Wilson on stage and multi-instrumentalist Drew Erickson, the mother figure in "On and On," and ending with "Ramona," where she glared at the audience with hunger in her eyes, sizing every member up with a primal gaze, ready to devour them whole.
All photos by Josh Kitchen
Introing the last song of the night, Ramona album closer "Help Is On Its Way,' Cummings confided that when she recorded the album, it was during a difficult period in her life where she needed a hand to hold. With a tear welling up in her eye she thanked the audience for being there. "This is going to sound corny, but right now I feel like my hand is being held." For 75 minutes, Cummings held the audience in the palm of her hands as well. I saw rock and roll future! and its name is Grace Cummings! Ok, yes, that sounds dramatic, but to everyone there last night, it was three chords and the truth.
Openers Maxim Ludwig and the Mystics tore through seven songs as support act, and treated the audience with a guest appearance by Angel Olsen.
Grace Cummings' U.S. tour has four remaining dates this month in North Carolina, D.C., Delaware, and New York, before heading off to Europe this summer. Do not miss her.
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