Steve Lacy at Roadrunner, 10/10/22

“I haven’t toured in two years,” Steve Lacy announced when he took the Roadrunner stage on Monday, October 10, “and now these tickets are selling like Supreme.” He shouldn’t be surprised, as his second full album Gemini Rights contained the song of the summer “Bad Habit”, viral hit “Static”, and eight other guitar-driven R&B bangers. 

However, Steve is no stranger to fame having collaborated with people like Tyler, the Creator, Kali Uchis, Vampire Weekend, and Blood Orange since high school. A former member of the band The Internet, Steve Lacy has taken his guitar talent all over the music world and now finally, to the Roadrunner stage. 

Foushée made perfect sense as an opener, as she is featured on Gemini Rights in the song “Sunshine”, which she later performed with Steve. Despite a short set, Foushée gave even her smoothest tracks a harder rock edge in live performance, transforming hits like “Deep End” into songs in need of a mosh pit. 

Before Steve went on, fog filled the stage and a giant archway was wheeled onto the stage in the shape of the devil horns from Gemini Rights cover. As Steve appeared seemingly out of nowhere and stepped through the arch, the result was deliciously theatrical. With the rest of the band obscured in the back, the audience could see Steve and only Steve on the stage, a magic trick that made it seem all of that sound was coming from one man. And it was—as Steve mentioned later in the show, “All the guitars, everything is me. I did this all myself.” 

Despite his star-studded past and self-made confidence, he started off the show by saying, “I’m kind of shy tonight, I’ll warm up soon.” Even if this was not the case—he strutted around the front edge of the stage during the opening performance of “Buttons”— it only served to make a previously obsessed audience like him even more. 

He wasn’t a dancer, he didn’t flip his hair or jump up and down, but armed only with an acoustic guitar, his fingers danced. With nothing else to distract the audience, they could zoom in on just how talented of a guitarist and vocalist Steve is. Still, he included plenty of epic guitar solos, which somehow conveyed the heartbreak and longing on songs like “Static” and “Helmet” without ever losing his signature register of cool. 

Gemini Rights is a breakup album, but it is a breakup album with style. Instead of wailing ballads, each song is funky and whimsical, perhaps hinting at an optimistic future by interspersing lyrics about depression and letting go with plenty of “shoo-doo-doos”. He also included plenty of more lighthearted tracks from earlier in his catalog, such as “N-Side”, “Infrumami”, and “Playground.” Dancing through the fog and neon lights, the audience knew every word of every song old or new, speaking to Steve’s popularity as an artist even with only two full-length albums.

But what the audience really wanted was “Dark Red”, which is arguably his biggest hit and a song Steve waited until the very end to play. Continuing with his flair for the dramatic, he took his sweet time after ending the show with “Bad Habit” and before he returned for the encore. Finally, after reappearing on stage, he played “C U Girl” and while the audience shouted for “Dark Red”, made them wait as he repeated, “Y’all don’t want it that bad!” This sort of deliberate prolonging clearly did the trick as the crowd exploded when the hypnotic drum beat began to play, fading into the Boston night just as the lyrics of “only you babe, only you darling”  did.