muna @ mercury lounge

muna @ mercury lounge

MUNA brought their Saves The World tour to Mercy Lounge in Nashville on October 4th–just a month after their album of the same name was released. They opened the show with lead single “Number One Fan,” an anthem about coming to terms with being your own biggest fan. A MUNA show is a celebration of self-love, self-care, and self-preservation. In their words, saving yourself is the key to saving the world. They performed all but two songs on their new album, along with crowd favorites “I Know A Place” and “Loudspeaker” from their 2017 debut About U, and in between songs, the crowd rarely stopped cheering long enough for the band to get a few words in–until bassist Naomi McPherson declared triumphantly, mid-show, that they are “the greatest band in the world.” I wholeheartedly agree.

Keep up with MUNA here.

tomi @ mercury lounge

tomi @ mercury lounge

On July 11th, TOMI rocked The Mercury Lounge.

Filing in through the front door, the immediate rush of air conditioning was a relief on such a muggy summer evening. Fans made their way first to the bar, then into the stage area, filling the room. As TOMI walked through the crowd, cheers rippled through the audience, making their way from back to front. A magnetic performer, TOMI took possession of the room from the very first note, packing an almost unprecedented power into her wide-ranging vocals. Her music provides the perfect combination of rock and pop: some songs led the audience to dance, others to head-banging. The joy and abandon in the air was just as palpable as the outside heat, and radiated off the talkative TOMI, who spent time in-between songs sharing the stories behind them. Some of these were heartbreaking; she spoke of crying in a locker room at a yoga studio after a breakup, and a former friend suffering from addiction (she doesn’t think he ever heard the song she wrote about him, but she hopes he does at some point and recognizes it). Then, of course, there were some funnier ones, such as working a day job as a secretary in which she had to smile all the time. For her very last song, she delighted the crowd by debuting a new, sparkly guitar named Pam.

It’s clear that for TOMI, the Mercury Lounge and her latest EP, What Kind of Love, is only the beginning.