Concert Review: Indigo Girls with Opener Corook
Photographed by Jeremy Cowart
The Indigo Girls have had quite a big 2023.
Their career-spanning documentary, “It’s Only Life After All,” came out in January; their canonical hit “Closer to Fine” soundtracked Barbie’s real world journey in the summer blockbuster; and an award-winning musical of their songs, called “Glitter and Doom,” is making rounds at indie film festivals. Even the New York Times is penning think-pieces about the folk-rock duo’s resurgence in popular culture.
It’s perhaps a surprising voyage for Atlanta-bred childhood friends Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, whose debut album was released in 1987. They’ve been on near-constant tour since the May 2020 release of their 15th studio album, “Look Long,” and this week they graced Saliers’ birth town for a sold-out show at New Haven’s College Street Music Hall.
Opening act corook, whose Tiktok hits “it’s ok!” and “if i were a fish” skyrocketed them to fame in the last two years, was a natural choice to start the show. The colorful singer-songwriter’s music swings between hilarious and heartbreaking, with arresting earnestness in both their songs and stage presence. Indigo Girls gigs are a very safe space to be queer, demonstrated in the crowd’s raucous cheers as corook sang “if i were a fish”: “We’re as free as can be / To be the you-est of you / And the me-est of me.”
They left the audience feeling like we’d all made a new friend, one who knows about our constant doomscrolling and our late-night anxieties, but loves us anyway (“Hey, hey, it's okay / Everybody feels kinda weird some days”).
Then it was Indigo Girls time. A hallmark of the Indigo Girls’ live show is the sheer number of stringed instruments that Ray and Saliers put to use. It seemed like more than a dozen different acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, mandolins and ukuleles made their way onstage in the hands of their hardworking guitar tech. Only their longtime collaborator, violinist Lyris Hung, stuck with her instrument throughout - but even she used a loop board and not a few pedal effects.
The 21-song set gave an impressive retrospective on the Indigo Girls’ career. Classics like “Get Out The Map,” “Least Complicated” and “Power of Two” drew the audience into sing-alongs that delighted Ray and Saliers: “I love your energy!” Saliers emphatically told the crowd, adding later that she was “just so grateful for you all.”
Several standout songs from “Look Long” showed the songwriting prowess still alive and well in Ray and Saliers. The groovy, rhythmic “Howl at the Moon” started a theater-wide dance-along, and “When We Were Writers” showcased Saliers’ crystalline voice and poetic lyrics.
You might expect their strings-only setup to yield a stripped-back, acoustic vibe. You’d be wrong, but you’d be forgiven if you’ve never seen Ray strum an acoustic guitar – or even a mandolin slung impossibly low on her hips – with the vehemence of a death-metal shredder; or Saliers effortlessly rip into complex riffs and solos. Heads were definitely banging to the chimeric Bhangra-influenced tune “Faye Tucker,” and the audience’s loudest whoops of the night might have been for Saliers’ expert country-rock slide guitar on “Shit Kickin’.”
Those whoops emerged from a diverse audience of Gen-Xers who likely listened to “Swamp Ophelia” in their dorm rooms, to groups of college students who may have first heard of them in “Barbie,” to the Gen-Xers’ children brought up on their parents’ music and acquiescing that, at least in this case, it’s actually pretty bangin’.
Set closer “Closer to Fine” brought everyone to their feet for the classic chorus “I went to the doctor / I went to the mountain…” and so forth, and the encore with dark classic “Kid Fears” kept everyone singing at full tilt. Ray and Saliers broke into wide smiles and laughter as the audience drowned them out on final song “Galileo,” pleading “How long til my soul gets it right?”
Whether you’ve been listening to them from their 90’s heyday or first heard them with your parents, Indigo Girls are still out here proving why they’ve had continued success for more than 35 years: Love, passion, and harmony never go out of style.