Marielle Kraft Wants You to Know That the Right People Will Love You

LEW also wants you to know that you’re probably too sexy to be this sad.

Marielle seems happy when she’s making you feel seen.

It's after the show. Both bands have played. I'm currently speaking with LEW, the opening act for Marielle, and I've handed her my business card that carefully says I'm a live music photographer. LEW and I exchange pleasantries. We talk about where she lives now. How much traffic truly sucks in Los Angeles. The usual things people talk about when they don't know what else to talk about. LEW is young, beautiful, kind, personable, and her fans absolutely love her. I am in my 40s. I have kids. I work a full-time job. I'm a programmer, writer, photographer, and a has-been musician. I'm no longer writing or recording music. We have little in common, very little shared ground save for the light of this venue. Two totally different generations standing beneath pale lights in Holocene in Southeast Portland. I could tell her about my days playing music or touring, but it would be supremely depressing. There's nothing more pathetic than a forty-something that can't let go of the past, whether it be how many touchdowns he scored in a high school game or how many states he played in while touring with his band.

LEW’s voice carries in a way that belies her small stature.

So, LEW and I talk about traffic and how it's going to rain for five long months in Oregon, and then we say our goodbyes. She’s lovely, but I am not much of a conversationalist even when I do have common ground with someone. But fans come and they tell her how much her music means to her, and she smiles and she thanks them and she’s gracious and is everything you’d hope for in a celebrity.

I shuffle to where Marielle is standing, next to a big quilt, sewn by Marielle herself, that says "The Right People Will Love You." I extend my hand for a shake and she opens her arms to hug me instead. We stand awkwardly for just a moment.

She looks confused for a second but smiles and says, "Oh, handshake? I’m a hugger."

I shake my head. I'm a hugger by nature, too. Give me a hug and don't skimp on the force--pull me in like I'm about to die saving the world by blowing up a giant asteroid, à la Armageddon. I put my hand down and give her a hug instead. She's a good hugger. None of that weak shit that passes as pleasantries, but a real, solid hug. The kind your mom would give you if she were still alive. Or so I imagine, anyway.

What the hell am I doing here? I hear you ask.

Marielle sings to her congregation.

I'd messaged Marielle about three months prior and asked for the opportunity to photograph her show at the Holocene. I had listened to some of her music, I'd investigated her following, and I was deeply intrigued by the message she was trying to get across to her fervent fans. The message, if it could be summarized in a few words, was simple: you’re not alone.

Marielle had responded with a kind message, and she’d told me to email her management folks. One thing led to another, and here I am. Holocene. Standing below the lights after a show, living in the afterglow of a performance that wasn't meant for me, but obviously means absolutely everything to the people who hear it.

But let me back up a bit. How was the show, right? That’s what you’d ask me next. How does a person just talk about the afterglow and none of the sex or violence? Okay. Fine.

LEW, absolutely destroying that note. While playing keys. Respect.

When LEW took the stage, I wasn't sure what to think, really. And that's not my old man curmudgeonly bullshit talking. Well. Okay. It might be a little bit. I'm a believer that music might have been better back when ugly people were still allowed to be famous simply for their music. But that's probably made me unreasonably negative toward people that are ridiculously attractive and use that sex appeal as part of their image. Which is silly, because that's a time-honored dance that has existed since music was even a thing. My guess is that Cher or Madonna or Rob Thomas or Elvis or The Beatles or <INSERT SOME OTHER FAMOUS ARTIST HERE> (yes, that bit was intentional, I didn't forget to put something here) would not have been nearly as successful without their looks, and the same goes for any number of other artists from the last hundred years. Hell, two hundred years. Sure, we have our examples of loads of less-than-attractive-but-okay-looking artists from those days, too, and probably more so than now--which is my solo supporting argument about music having been better. So, I guess what I’m saying is that maybe I need to update my biases a bit.

But I digress.

LEW has L.A. cool down to a science--the kind of effortless, just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-onto-a-magazine-cover vibe that makes you want to check your own reflection to make sure you don't have anything in your teeth. She's playing solo tonight, just her and a guitar, and she falls softly into the first song with a confident strum. It's indie pop, for sure, but there's also grit to it, a scuffed-up angst that I imagine is usually hidden behind glossy production. It's not the bubblegum I was expecting.

Then she starts to sing. Her words are daggers. Soulful daggers. Her voice carries from a deep well and she seemingly never runs out of air. She's not singing about holding hands and walking on the beach; she's singing about the gut-wrenching, ugly-cry part of a breakup where you're checking your ex's new girlfriend's Instagram story and hating yourself for it. She sings about feeling dead inside until someone comes along and makes you feel slightly less dead, which for her, apparently, is the pinnacle of friendship. It's brutally, uncomfortably honest. I look out at the crowd, at these kids who are probably still figuring out how to file their own taxes, and they are hanging on her every syllable. A girl in the front row, mascara running down her face, is softly reciting the lyrics back at LEW like a sacred mantra.

Too sexy to be this sad. -LEW

There's no choreographed bouncing. LEW slowly prowls the stage, guitar in hand, with a coiled energy, a simmering mix of joy and anger and sorrow and a dash of dynamite. One minute she's staring down the microphone stand like she's about to confess some murder, the next she's cracking a self-deprecating joke that makes the entire room feel like they're in on a secret. It's like a public exorcism. She's casting out the demons of toxic relationships and the general anxiety of being human in this rundown, bankrupt world, and she's taking the entire audience with her.

By the time her set ends, my curmudgeonly bullshit has mostly evaporated. I’m thankful for it, because there’s another band of young, attractive people coming up next. I may still feel ancient, like a relic from a forgotten civilization where we wrote our feelings in notebooks instead of just TikTok captions. But I have a profound respect for what she just did. She bled for these kids, and they loved her for it.

As LEW leaves the stage, the crowd disperses to get more drinks, to chat with one another, to jockey for positions near the stage or near the back or to buy merch before there's a mad rush. I speak to several of the concertgoers, asking them why they love these two bands specifically, and the resounding message was so clear: because these are singers who seem to genuinely care.

Hope is on the horizon.

Soon, the stage goes dark once again. Marielle and her band walk out and take their positions. The air crackles with anticipation and the collective hum of phone cameras starting up and a shared breath held just before the music starts. It is a moment of theater, of darkness and audio samples and the swell of music into an explosion of light and soaring vocals--and it's effective. The crowd is transformed from mingling concertgoers to participants in the wonderful madness of loving something; they don't just love Marielle, and they don't just love her music; they love the way they are made to feel. They love how they don't feel alone in how they feel. They are holding up signs with lyrics, and they are holding one another in their embraces, and they're singing the songs to each other. They are a we.

Marielle, for her part, moves across the stage with an easy grace. She points her fingers out at the horizon, as if the act signifies that hope exists out there somewhere for each person in the room to find. Even when her in-ear monitor fails and she is forced to stop and then restart the song, she is gracious, and somehow still in tune without being able to hear herself. She teasingly admonishes one of her band members "for failing her," and the crowd laughs and it is an endearing moment of connection.

I don't want to sound like a broken record here. (But I will). I write a lot about the joy of being among people while they love something, while they become a single swaying organism upon a dance floor as music pours into their souls. There's nothing like it. But given the world today, I think it's useful to point out what makes us good neighbors. And the Marielle fans are the right kind of people. The kind you really want in your corner. I could just tell by each interaction I had with each person. While I moved through the room with all the grace of a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerin factory (ten points if you get the movie reference), people were still kind and allowed me close to the stage with my camera. I am an intimidating old man with a beard that reaches my chest, and still the people in the audience were so gracious with me in their proximity. I look like a redneck that'd have an old pickup truck and a Dixie flag in the back window, but they gave me the benefit of the doubt. And I love them all for it.

Marielle's music is just full to the brim with vulnerability. I feel like I'm listening to someone singing the contents of their diary to an entire room. Each song is a quiet contemplation of love, of the altar of heartbreak, and more than anything, she creates lyrics that are impossible not to see yourself in. As I zigzagged around the venue taking photos from this angle and that, I am simultaneously disarmed and absolutely touched by each song. She doesn't want you to listen, per se; she wants you to feel through her songs and realize that you're not alone. She desperately wants you to know that each thing you endure in this life is a thing that will eventually find its place in your past.

Before playing "The Right People Will Love You," she told a story about a young couple she met after one of her shows. They'd said it was the first time they'd felt comfortable holding hands in public, and an older couple behind them had said that that was them thirty years ago. And that no matter what happens, no matter who you tell about your love or not, the old couple said that, "The right people will love you."

Looking around her crowd, there were more than a few people who had obviously been cast out by their families for who they are. When Marielle broke into the soft acoustic opening of the song, there were very few dry eyes left in the room. Me included. And I get it. I finally get it. This is not about being pretty or having a good marketing team. This is about taking a scalpel to your own chest, pulling out your still-beating heart, and showing it to a room full of strangers. It's about making them feel less alone in their own private miseries.

It’s a campfire serenade with Marielle Kraft

If I could distill one moment into a memory to live over and over, it would be this: toward the end of her set, Marielle and the band walk into the crowd to play an acoustic song. They are completely encircled by their fans, by people that love this string of melodies and words and who have come here to feel seen. It is the perfect, tangible proof of what everyone I spoke with--online and in the crowd--said about her: Marielle cares about the people that love her music.

Soon the spell fades, the house lights rise, and we are left to wander the world again. I head out to the merch table, where Marielle has assured everyone that she will be talking to anyone who wants to talk to her. And that's where I eventually found her and she gave me that hug.

Marielle talked to every. Single. Person.

Marielle and I share a few final moments, chatting away about the effect that she has upon her diehard fans. I'm a fan now, too, though I am aware her message is not meant for me. Not quite. I am not quite lost in this world, at least not about the same things. The beacons and lighthouses I require are different. But the sentiment is the same, the need is universal, and I remember what it was like being young. I remember the music I listened to then by less-than-attractive musicians--and a few good-looking ones--and feeling seen and heard in a world that was mostly blind and deaf.

(EDIT: It occurred to me after writing this that it almost sounds like I’m saying Marielle is unattractive. Not that it matters or that what I think matters but, just for clarity, I’m not saying that at all.)

Then I ask Marielle for one huge favor: I tell her that my child--Lillian--is non-binary and that they believe they're going to be gay. That they're nine years old, going on ten, and would love to receive a message from a musician. Lillian absolutely loves talking to musicians whenever they go with me to shows. It’s generally the highlight of the experience.

Marielle lights up and agrees without any hesitation. I hold up my phone to record, and she records an off-the-cuff message.

"Your dad told me all about you, and I'm so proud of you and I'm so excited to see where you go."

It's a good message. Marielle is full of good messages. And I'm really excited to see where she goes, too.