I never used to like slow and moody concerts because I saw mosh pits as a place to swing my hips and get sweaty and kiss strangers. I could be crazy in a crowd and not feel too seen, despite how publicly I wanted to celebrate the song. In all the chaos and movement, things still felt private.
But then there are shows like those by Sex Week and Acopia that remind me that nothing is private about taking in music around others. The concert experience is actually utterly vulnerable, like stripping your soul bare and breathing your emotions onto others—no matter how many people are around.
What is more sentimental than witnessing a woman close her eyes at the start of a song—eyebrows furrowed, hands clasped at her heart— only to open them three whole songs later, after she had finished fully listening? Her emotions, alongside all the others hovering in the room above the crowd, are palpable in that moment.
The whole ordeal of concert-going feels so ritualistically human, too. We’ve been gathering in spaces, moving in rhythm, crying, holding hands, and shouting the same words as one another in every part of our timeline. Music is truly the language of the heart and soul. When speaking that language with a herd of strangers for hours on end, nothing about concert-going feels private to me.
Especially at the shows I attended last week at Schubas Tavern, where Sex Week and Acopia were skilled in the art of sewering sentiment. Both bands offered a hazy, atmospheric kind of sound that settled over the small space like a cloud of cigarette smoke. Schubas Tavern, formerly a historic Schlitz house, is still adorned with the iron-wrought, gold-gilded details of a Queen Anne-styled beer den... and it is the perfect space to ruminate within.
Once the amber lighting laid low, Sex Week took the stage under a blanket of thick fog. The two musicians of the group, Pearl Amanda Dickson and Richard Orofino, were joined by a keyboardist, a couple of guitars, and Dickson’s iconic green bob wig. They opened with slow, choral music before breaking into more of their experimental and playful sounds.
Orofino stood stoically with his guitar to one side, only his sharp facial features aglow in the shadowed lighting. Dickson danced ribbon-like around the stage, as though a contortionist, with twisted limbs and a craning neck. She, too, was painted a silhouette under the soft lights. It made sense that the duo takes heavy influence from surrealist art and Lynchian cinema; the display of their show was uncanny and beautifully haunting.
The audience was entirely absorbed by the show, synchronized to the mood-driven metronome of Sex Week. It wasn’t until the end, when the pair played their number one art pop track, ‘Coach,’ that the crowd broke out of their hypnotism to jump and wail alongside Dickson, who was bent over yelling into her mic on the stage.
Shortly after, Dickson and Orofino calmly packed up and left the stage, not having much to do with large crowd interaction or closing gestures. In fact, when I was moving around the back of the venue later in the night, I bumped into Dickson—green wig and all—casually propped up in a bar stool by the merch stand. She nodded, smiled, and we turned our heads to continue listening to the next act.
At this time, Acopia was playing, and the crowd was once again in a transfixed state. The indie/electronic trio consisted of lead vocalist Kate Durman and instrumentalists Lachlan McGeehan and Morgan Wright, who slow-burned downtempo, shoegaze, and post punk melodies into a singular dreamlike set.
They, too, did not concern themselves with the sweeping gesture of performance. Low pink lights also sculpted the stage members into shadows, artfully obscuring details of their face and expression. They kept close to their music, holding a breath in between songs and calmly lacing through each song. Durman, as per usual, breathed an angel’s vocal into the microphone. McGeehan and Wright tugged at the heart strings with a slowly building, reverbed sound. I was keen on how introspective their lyrics felt. As the show progressed, you felt the room sink into a ruminative state: swaying with music, chewing on a thought or two that the songs evoked.
I researched that ‘Acopia’ refers to a clinical term for one’s inability to cope with the demands placed upon them. When suffering from Acopia, one is extremely emotionally fragile and overwhelmed.
While I felt the emotional fragility in the room– everyone’s sentiment bleeding bare on their sleeve– there was certainly no overwhelm. In fact, Durman's misty voice and ponderous programmed drums felt more like a pledge to slow down and think. It was similar to Sex Week’s soundscape, that melted the rough edges and brutality of modern urban life.
Looking back on it now, with a gallery full of silhouetted concert shots, both the Sex Week and Acopia shows felt like shadow-work. Dimmed lights, veiled figures, lyricism steeped in thought and feeling – the musicians opened doors to the unconscious in the crowd.
As a Jungian term that means exploring the repressed parts of oneself—anger, hurt, past-trauma—and bringing them into the consciousness, it didn’t feel necessarily lighthearted. Rather, it was meaningful and heartfelt, a tool of self-exploration. The shadow work of the shows engendered waves of contemplation and grief, but also an illuminating sort of emotional release.
It is why I observed that woman with eyes closed, feeling, for three whole songs. It is perhaps why, at the end of such a set, Dickson had to take a seat on that barstool at the back of the room. For me, it was a moment to mute the noise of my busy daily life. The Sex Week and Acopia shows weren't about glamour, or about all that sweaty hip-swinging or stranger-kissing. The shows were a vessel for that true human endeavour of gathering to listen and think and feel. And at the end, it reminded you how salient and soulful live music can be.
Both groups will be touring in North America in the coming months, each playing new music that was released last Autumn. To find more, follow along with Sex Week and Acopia on Instagram.
And to view the shadow-work gallery of photos from these shows, click here!
