Music artist Fiona Grey and her band performed at the Yacht Club on Nov. 30, with local opening bands Hep Cat and Lily DeTaeye.
By Rhiana Chickering
On Nov. 30 at the Yacht Club, Fiona Grey passionately performed music from her *What You Want* tour, following opening bands Hep Cat and Lily DeTaeye.
Hep Cat performed its songs employing bass, electric guitar, and drums.
Lead singer and electric guitarist Keegan Moore, sang with emotion and smoothness, changing his range seemingly effortlessly, as drummer Nick Burgess and bass player Peyton Meiers added intensity.
Moore, Burgess, and Meiers described the music style as psychedelic/indie rock with a good energy.
“It’s very meditative [playing the music on stage],” Meiers said.
At the beginning of its songs, Hep Cat’s music is the kind of rock you naturally sway along with. When the music came to a chorus, the energy increased with a more apparent bass beat and faster notes from the electric guitar. People in the audience nodded and swayed along with every beat.
Hep Cat has opened up for several bands in Iowa City.
“It’s a great way to get our music out there,” Moore said.
DeTaeye, who recorded her first EP this year, began her set singing soulfully as she flawlessly played a keyboard.
For the rest of the set, DeTaeye and her band picked up an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, a bass, drums, and a harmonica to produce a quite country sound— a sharp contrast to Hep Cat and Grey. The band’s songs without the harmonica were more in align with the concert’s sound. However, DeTaeye’s vocal range was phenomenal.
Soon, Grey ran onto the stage, dancing avidly with her music as if the small stage was an arena stage, encouraging the audience to dance along with her.
During her dancing, Grey was able to immaculately alter her pitch as the music built up to the chorus of her upcoming single “Dirty Dream.”
“It was a song that I wrote while I was traveling,” Grey said. “[Initially,] it was just me singing into my phone, [then] we turned it into a disco-dance song … it’s very much that kind of honest, [therapeutic] songwriting, so I’m really excited for people to dance to it.”
When Grey sang “Confessions of a Pop Star,” she vocalized and danced as if she were reliving the emotions depicted in the song, her voice sounding sultry as she sang about obsession, love, and heartbreak while the music played a mix of pop and rock.
“I jokingly call it ‘Dirty Pop,’ ” Grey said. “It’s pop music with a very organic rock ’n’ roll undertones.
“In the end of the day, I feel like genre is dead, and at this time in music, we are just able to make music that’s true to us — it doesn’t just have to sit into a box of a genre. So, dirty pop could be soul influences [or] it could be rock influences.”
Grey’s performance during her What You Want tour was soulful, as she sang and danced along with the emotions of the songs, her voice range flawless and her dancing emotional as she relived the stories in her music.
“There are a lot of times [when] I am putting melodies to the exact thoughts and the exact things I wish I could say to people,” Grey said. “There are so many things we wish we could say to certain people, and in some twisted way, I have been able to say exactly what I want to say to people through music.”
