Strings & Stories: Concert Review of Liang Lawrence and Adam Melchor’s Acoustic Sets at Omeara - 18/02/2024

There is truly no better way to spend a Sunday evening than to immerse yourself in two of the most dazzling acoustic sets that I have witnessed in a long time. On 18th February 2024, Adam Melchor took a short interval from his support slot on tour with the jazzy pop artist (and Grammy award-winning!) Laufey to host his own headline show at Omeara - an iconic venue for Londoners to discover budding talents. And, Adam was accompanied by a Blonde Vibrations’ favourite, singer-songwriter, Liang Lawrence.

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Liang Lawrence graced the Omeara stage first in her support slot, and is a perfect match to perform alongside Adam, having previously supported him on his EU tour last year. She shares Adam’s warm musical tone and personal anecdotal on-stage presence, it’s impossible to leave Liang’s set without feeling like you met her in a pub beer garden and found a new best friend.

To an audience who may not have discovered her discography yet, Liang described her songwriting process as a bunch of letters that she “didn’t have the guts to send”, a nod to her debut EP ‘letters to myself’, released in August 2023. Liang’s raw and intimate EP details the experiences that all young girls have experienced as they grow up and her storytelling is something you can picture in a typical coming-of-age movie - it’s hard to not associate the therapeutic release of these letters in musical form with the 2018 Netflix teen movie, ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’.

Liang expressed her experience of performing her personal songs as placing her heart on a platter and asking the audience to all “look at it”. A song that stuck with me, having finally been given the pleasure of seeing Liang live was ‘stuck’ (excuse the pun); a song dedicated to her best friend. As someone who absolutely believes in platonic soulmates and has planned to spend the rest of my life with my best friend - see also: Blonde Vibrations - I could cry thinking about this song; the chorus being:

And when I feel like there’s no place on this planet

But I don’t understand the stars

There’s no place that I could’ve crash landed

And I like to be stuck where you are

Liang accurately summarises the feeling of finding the perfect friend who feels like home to you, giving you comfort no matter what external stresses there may be. Throughout Liang’s set, she demonstrated her intricate storytelling, with a sneak peek of an unreleased song inspired by a run-in with an ex in front of a supermarket. A scenario that, let’s be honest, could happen to us at any point and be the subject matter for every friend date for the next foreseeable six months. The song extends this interaction to a metaphor of a funeral in the aisles of a supermarket for the previous relationship, a dramatic analogy that you would expect on Lizzy McAlpine’s 2022 album ‘five seconds flat’.

Speaking of similar artists, Liang performed an acoustic version of The Japanese House’s ‘Touching Yourself’ from the album ‘In the End It Always Does’ (2023) - the perfect fit for both the crowd and Liang’s voice. The support slot concludes with Liang’s top song on Spotify, ‘(not) a love song’, partnered with the story of Liang meeting someone on a night out and deciding that they will then spend the rest of their life together, once again who hasn’t done this? Liang and the audience, captivated by her charming anecdotes, giggle at the sweet couples who produce relationship montages to a song that is ultimately based on a delusional potential future. The song’s hook of “oh, to be in it / oh to be in it with you” will be swirling around in your head for days after listening to this tune, and you won’t be mad about it.

After a brief break between acts, Adam Melchor began his headline slot and instantly the audience was in awe at his talent, both vocally and on the acoustic guitar. Adam’s passion for music and live performances shines throughout the set, and he takes a moment to thank the audience for attending the show and emphasising the importance of supporting live music and venues. The audience peacefully sang along to both new and older songs, especially during the deeply personal, ‘The Archer’, a song about Adam losing a friend too soon, and the gap left from this, with the haunting lyrical hook of ‘I need more time’. There were quite a few tears at this point of the set.

Adam’s powerful lyricism shines through strongly during this acoustic set, with the guitar really letting his vocals and words shine in the intimate venue. His potent lyricism is something we would expect from the likes of boygenius (both as independent artists and collectively). For example, in ‘itsjustmyheart’, Adam tells the story of an ex’s car being damaged by a fallen tree shortly after breaking his heart, with the chorus reading:

When the tree fell on your car

And made your windshield fall apart

You called me and I always wondered why

‘Cause I don’t have the auto parts

And you have your insurance card

After singing, Adam chuckles saying how funny it is to hear crowds sing his “silly songs” back to him. When you purchase tickets to an acoustic set by such an emotive artist like Adam, you don’t expect to laugh as much as you do - but it’s a pleasant surprise. Before performing ‘Angel Numbers’, the American singer says how ironic it is to perform the song with the reference to Tower Bridge, which is ‘right over there’; then admits that he’s actually not sure where Tower Bridge is in relation to Omeara.

This headline slot was truly one of a kind, with two surprise guests. Liang returned back to the stage to perform ‘Touch and Go’; a perfect blend between their two voices, we need a studio version of this ASAP. Then for the final song, after the record-short encore break, Adam played his bestselling song ‘Real Estate’ with Searows, a fellow American singer-songwriter, also performing at Omeara the next day. We were blessed with two unreleased songs, ‘Is There Still A Light On?’ (hitting streaming services on 22/02) and ‘Not Good For You’ (release date TBC) with Billie Eilish’s ‘What Was I Made For’, a song that took the world by storm with the Barbie hype last year.

Both Liang Lawrence and Adam Melchor’s sets left the Omeara audience in awe with just their voices and guitars; a testament to their magnetic stage presence and undeniable talent. Individually, they produce intricate narratives within their song, jam-packed with emotive language and deep-cut metaphors and it makes for an incredibly captivating live music experience. It’s safe to say that they are going to be long-term favourites over on the Blonde Vibrations podcast.

Words by Lilyemma (Blonde Vibrations)