Opening the night was Yuneki, inviting the audience of her home town show to make it “the best one yet”. With a discography-spanning set, Yuneki’s songs cut raw; her most recent EP, ‘Baby Teeth’, inspired by the “hardest year” of her life. Yuneki was joined onstage by Jim Ralphs on guitar, who complemented her gorgeous vocals with dreamy harmonies.
The lights dimmed, and a video introduction was met with a riot of applause and screams of excitement. Chloe darted onto the stage, waving and smiling at the crowd before diving into ‘Abyss’. The infectious pop energy of ‘Celebrity’, with the audience’s voices audible throughout, led into the first of many chatty segways: "It makes me so happy to see you all, I’m so proud of this show."
Introduced as a song about “loving someone so much you would f*cking kill them”, ‘Body Bag’ had a soft punk edge that felt like a 2000s retro pop track, moving swiftly into a slower yet sassy atmosphere in ‘Plastic Purse'. After just a handful of tracks, Chloe excitedly shared, “I have a feeling this will be one of my favourite nights”. From the crowd's reaction, it seems the feeling was mutual.
Tracks from their album ‘Blood Bunny’, which had marked a major sonic transformation, weaved between her latest album, ‘oyster’. The 2021 album hit ‘Take Your Time’ was promised never to leave the setlist, full of audience participation; “your voices are incredible”. Feel-good pop was the tone of the first half of the set, with ‘catch’, ‘CDbaby’ and ‘DRESS UP’ getting an ever more gleeful audience reaction. Her “reigning favourite song from oyster”, ‘7seas’ brought a tropical-esque atmosphere, before a warning about the “inevitability of a Chloe Moriondo show, it’s gonna get sad”.
Floaty synths balanced ethereal vocals in balladic ‘shoreline’, self-described as “a bit embarrassing and a bit too honest”, Chloe gently pacing the stage; “And I am no quitter so I will love you 'til I die”. ‘use’ had the audience waving, aptly described as “a little ocean waving”, before ‘pond’. One of the “saddest songs” they’ve ever written, ‘pond’ exemplified Moriondo’s heart-wrenching lyricism and passion for her craft, as she was lit up by phone torches, “that meant the world to me”. Joining Chloe and the band onstage was Kitty, Chloe's heavily stickered guitar, for the first song she ever wrote on guitar, ‘Manta Rays’. With an anthemic chorus, Chloe transformed the O2 Academy into the sonic set of a coming-of-age movie.
Following a dramatic and seductive cover of Mitski’s ‘Liquid Smooth’, Chloe closed their pre-encore set with a party, encouraging a “head bop, bounce or flat frick if you’re nasty”. Jumping around on stage, the audience knew every word to ‘oyster’, before a journey to the clubs in Atlantis where “all the mermaids are shaking ass”; ‘girls with gills’ was a sonic combination of Charli XCX and 2000s club anthems.
Well-trained on the expectations of an encore, soon the audience erupted with cries of “Chloe”. Returning to the stage, 2022 hit ‘Fruity’ was an audience favourite. Asking the crowd, “just out of curiosity, how many people in the crowd are gay?”, and affirming “gay people are forever, trans people are forever”, Chloe Moriondo, joined by a word-perfect crowd, closed her International Oyster Tour with ‘I Want To Be With You’.
Maisy Neale
Images: Finn Delisle
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