Girl in Red w/ Holly Humberstone at The Truman, Kansas City, MO (2022-03-29)

“I’ve seen the future and it will be, I’ve seen the future and it works”— Prince

Now that the pandemic has become more of a manageable endemic and international acts are finally playing their oft-postponed shows, we’ve seen what the immediate future of female-driven alternative rock looks like, and it’s in good hands. Girl in Red and Holly Humberstone played to a packed house at The Truman on a rainy downtown Kansas City night.

The evening began with a thirty-five minute opening set from buzzing UK singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone, recipient of a recent prestigious Brits Rising Star Award and ahead of her arena support dates for three-time Grammy winner Olivia Rodrigo.

Humberstone is just twenty-two and released her The Walls Are Way Too Thin EP last November, and has been making waves ever since. “And I know I’m young, but I’m not a f’ in idiot” she sings on “Please Don’t Leave Just Yet” and that’s the truth, as she seems musically savvy beyond her years.

Humberstone somewhat reminds of an early Ellie Goulding, both in her smart, smaller sounding electro-folk songs, and her musical dexterity in pulling off a song either solo on piano or guitar, and it’s succinct and memorable arrangements.

“Sleep Tight” was a brand new song fans were thrilled to hear live, “Deep End” was Humberstone’s debut single, written for her sister, and the set ended with the new EP’s title track. The only downside was the slow moving line to show vaccination proof and ID for venue entry, still about two blocks long as Humberstone took to the stage.

It’s fair to say area fans had been waiting more than two years to finally see Girl in Red live. The show was long sold out and had to be postponed a couple times, and it’s also fair to say when shrieks of joy are let out as techs tuned each instrument, and a dozen or so handmade signs were held high in the crowd all night long, that you’ve made it and also made a connection.

Just twenty-three herself, Norwegian Marie Ringheim has quickly amassed a huge international fan base, and being an all-ages show, the audience was a diverse group- mostly female pre-teens, college-age, parents, LGBTQ+, and even middle-age and older folks.

The debut album is If I Could Make It Go Quiet, out last April on AWAL Records, and for her-seventy-minute set, the venue was anything but quiet with everyone from the front rail back, singing along with each song. Ringheim was predictably not dressed in red, but instead a comfortable t-shirt in front of her band and a backdrop composed of simple geometric shapes that forned a 3-D landscape on its side.

Between songs, Ringheim’s stage banter was almost train-of-thought, random musings as well as connecting directly with the audience, beginning with talk about her menstrual cycle after the first song (not called Girl in Red for nothing, I suppose), but the honesty was all very endearing.

2018’s “girls” caused a collective jumping on the venue floor, with Ringheim singing, “they’re so pretty, it hurts”, unafraid to reveal her feelings or sexuality and Ringheim admitted she couldn’t hear many of the kind words yelled at her, due to her in-ear monitors, but appreciated everything all the same.

The slower acoustic “I’ll Call You Mine” was preceded by a verse or two of a brand new song she’d been working on, to gleeful screams of joy to be hearing something new and huge radio hit, “Serotonin” released last March, but still in regular radio rotation, became a crowd sing-a-long for all 1200 in attendance and raged so hard that Ringheim unleashed in wild dancing during the song, completely broke her microphone and had to wait for a replacement.

After the song, she announced the best was yet to come and that any cramps she had to start the song, had disappeared and that adrenaline had fully kicked in, as she and the band launched into a thumping “bad idea!”.

Ringheim confessed that “midnight love” is one of her favorites from the new record, “watch you sleep” performed at other shows, was skipped, but it was fun to watch Ringheim ask some in the crowd, how far away some had come to witness the show (some traveled as far as 9-10 hours away).

The set would end with 2017’s “i wanna be your girlfriend”, the debut single that was first posted on Soundcloud, and took off skyward from there. A fan up front even gave her a handmade ring during the mid-point of the song, and Ringheim would end the song on her back, diving into the crowd and held up by all the arms and hands up front.

“I’ll call you mine, and I know I’ve been around” Girl in Red sings somewhat possessively, but to the longtime and loyal fans, the feeling is mutual as we’ve seen the musical future and along with star-in-the-making Holly Humberstone, the future works.

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