LOS ANGELES, CA- On Valintine’s day, Cailin Russo dropped a new EP titled The Drama, and she celebrated the occasion by playing to a packed house at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles.
The Drama is a great EP which, like her 2018 EP House With a Pool, reveals an artist with great promise. Where House revealed some of Cailin’s more pop-inclined sensibilities, The Drama is edgy and has … umm… dramatic… flair. Thumping beats. Pulsing synths. Fuzzed out guitar licks. Sonically, it’s a pretty bold sound.
From the anthemic “Declaration” to the slick “Sicko” to the authoritative “No Time”, Drama is a solid listen through and through. Whether Cailin’s confessional (“Declaration”) or flirty “You Touch Me, I Touch You Back”, the listener will want to jam to each mood.
Cailin’s still developing as an artist, so one can only guess if she’s going to continue down this musical path, but I for one am a big fan of what she laid down in The Drama‘s 6 tracks.
Opening for Cailin was the brash pop stylings of Brasko. The live performance, I think, influenced my perception of the music. While I was watching the performance, I got some “If The Struts were into S&M” kind of vibes from Brasko, but upon listening to Brasko’s debut 2019 debut album SEXDREAMSUPERSTAR, I got more of Prince & The New Power Generation feels than anything.
Don’t let the tight vinyl and ball gag intimidate you. The music is fun and funky, and oozes sensuality. Jordan Gable p/k/a “Brasko” is as charismatic as they come and really lets the music flow through his body with every hair flip and hip twitch. In an interview with another outlet, Gable professes he’s normally “an insecure, flawed human being”, but he was anything but that during his set. As Brako, he’s no holds barred, uninhibited. That made for a very enjoyable performance
In an interview with MTV News, Cailin reminisced about her Valentine’s day performance by saying, “I literally exploded onstage. I was like, ‘I can’t hold it in anymore.’ I walked out in a full wedding gown with this six-foot train and then stripped into a leather bra and panties. It was fucking awesome.” And explode she did.
I remember being impressed with Cailin’s live show when I saw her perform back in 2018, but after seeing her perform on this night, I said to myself, “This is a rockstar in the making”. Fierce, fiery and overflowing with irrepressible energy, Cailin controlled the captive audience with her performance.
The costume change from a wedding dress to a leather bikini was fun, but she clearly didn’t need any gimmicks to endear attendees to her. It was her joie de vivre on stage, and the enthusiasm with which she performed- and maybe that shot of tequila- that had the whole room singing and dancing along with her. She performed music from her latest release- which I believe was the first time she ever performed most of the songs to the audience- and a handful of her prior cuts.
If there was one thing that caught me off guard, it was the ravenousness of her fans. Man, do they love them some Cailin. It seemed like there were arms outstretched every moment of the show with the hopes that Cailin would reach back out and grasp (which she did on occasion). There was also one fan… a slightly tipsy fan… who pleaded to get on stage with Cailin, which Cailin obliged, and the perma-grin on her face was pretty priceless. A funny side note, when that same girl tried to get back up on stage later on during the show, I had to act as security and hold her back from doing so.
I’m sure Cailin had a lot of adrenaline rushing through her veins that night, and we all could feel that rush as she did her thing on the stage. With a catalog of music that’s growing, and getting better, and with a stage show that matches the vigor in her recordings, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing and hearing much more from this firecracker of a talent in the not so distant future.
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LIVE CLIPS
