Tomberlin at the Crystal Ballroom, 5/13
“Ah… can you tell this is our first stop on tour?” Sarah Tomberlin joked amidst an extended technical difficulty, laughing as she brought in the big guns (a guitar tuning app) to resolve the issue once and for all.
You’d be hard pressed to tell from her witty personality and the grin on her face, but Sarah Tomberlin – who performs under her surname – is the person responsible for one of the year’s weightiest albums, i don’t know who needs to hear this (idkwntht). idkwntht’s tender sound belies just how quietly devastating and arresting it is, touching on the impact of her religious upbringing, solitude, and emptiness. Which is not to say that idkwntht is an album that drips with nothing more than sadness – beneath it all, there’s an underlying desire to heal, to find peace, to simply exist. In Tomberlin’s writing, there exist moments of clarity, joy, humor, comfort, and coziness.
Tomberlin and her band played the entirety of idkwntht in order that night at the Crystal Ballroom. Album opener “easy” perfectly showcased Tomberlin’s haunting, airy, and delicate vocals, with its sparse arrangement of sustained piano keys and subdued drums creating a poignant and fragile tension. The sprawling track that followed, “born again runner,” recounts Tomberlin disassociating to fight off a panic attack brought about by a sermon. The song also happens to feature one of my favorite lyrics of the year – “I know I’m not Jesus / But Jesus, I'm trying to be enough.” It’s one of those oh so simple lyrics that tears your heart to shreds in the blink of an eye, which it certainly did when I heard it delivered live.
Tomberlin preceded “tap,” the following song, by mentioning that her and her studiomates had been watching a lot of Keanu Reeves-related media during the recording of idkwntht, and joked that you can actually hear her cooing “Keanuuuuuuu~” in the background of “tap.” Other highlights from her performance of idkwntht included “sunstruck,” in which she replays a conversation and reflects on her relationship with the person in question during the wee hours, and the fuzzed out indie-rock friendly “stoned,” which Tomberlin prefaced by saying “I just wanna rock” before launching into the song. Perhaps my favorite moment of the night came during the titular “idkwntht,” a warm feel-good ode to the power of art and connection during which Tomberlin led a call-and-response exercise – "I don't know who needs to hear this / sometimes it's good to sing your feelings." She finished her set by dipping into her back catalog, performing “Wasted,” “Hours,” and “Seventeen” from 2020’s Projections EP and her 2018 debut At Weddings.
Prior to the show, I’d heard of Tomberlin in passing, as an up-and-comer to watch out for in the coming years. With this in mind, I decided to dive into her discography when the opportunity to cover this show came up, and liked what I heard pretty quickly. And after attending the show itself, I’m even more certain that Tomberlin will be at the forefront of the next generation of indie folk/rock stars – keep an ear out for Tomberlin, because you’ll definitely be hearing more about her in the future.
