Jackie Verba.
Audrey Hobert was thankful to be at the Brooklyn Paramount after a mildly received performance at Jimmy Kimmel. “They just kind of sit there,” Hobert demurred about the late-night TV crowd as she stepped onto the stage for night two of three sold-out shows in Brooklyn.
Indeed, her crowd at the Paramount on September 30 was certainly not just sitting there. It took me about 45 minutes to get into the show for unclear reasons and the line snaked around three full blocks, resembling a multi-colored lanyard of Gen Z and Millennial pop fans dressed in bright pinks and yellows, and some even in full thematic clown regalia. Once inside, the crowd was faced with a mannequin, a curious decoy prop, on stage before the show began. Once Hobert arrived, standing atop a chair that was covered by an absurdly long trenchcoat a la The Little Rascals, the attendees were pretty much unanimously partaking in collective karaoke.
Hobert only has 12 songs in her catalogue, but the love she has accrued from a growing audience is deep and thorough.
She first emerged into public awareness as Gracie Abram’s best friend and co-writer, helping pen such hits as “That’s So True.” With her debut single (and still her biggest hit) “Sue Me,” Hobert distinguished herself as a wholly different kind of artist than Abrams. “Sue Me” is both self-deprecating and ecstatic, with Hobert singing over a vaguely electroclash pop beat about giving in to want: “And being a saint is exhausting / Sue me, I wanna be wanted.” She followed up the track with a string of singles, like “Bowling Alley” and “Wet Hair,” that further fleshed out her solo writerly persona, demarcating her as an artist equally equipped at writing about feeling awkward and meek as she is detailing the thrill of shirking off inhibition. By the time she released her debut album Who’s the Clown? last August, she was well set up to expand the capacity of her big top circus beyond fans of Abrams. She’s since played an NPR Tiny Desk, Gov Ball, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, and, yes, three nights at the Brooklyn Paramount.
At times in the Brooklyn venue, it was hard to hear her vocals as the crowd became a choir. The set wasn’t much more than 30 minutes long, but what it lacked in length it made up for in triumphant and theatrical monologues and prop work. Of the various items Hobert brought on stage with her, there was a trampoline, a barbeque lighter treated like an Olympic torch, red roses, and a fan that strategically blew Audrey’s blonde locks like she was in a soap opera.
The gags were seasoning for — not a distraction from — the matter at hand, which was ultimately Hobert’s storytelling. Hobert, whose background is in playwriting and screenplays, has a strong intuition for narrative and momentum. Well over a year after she released her single “Bowling Alley,” I’m still struck by the way she constructed a succinct story, built around a bowling party invite, that captures the gutpunch of FOMO, the dread of arrival, and the regret of being of being forced to sit in the company of others. Similarly, the slowgoing “Phoebe,” which she told the crowd is her “favorite song to sing,” uses Phoebe from Friends to tell a story about getting lost in a TV-binge of the show, morphing into a deeper personal transformation. The lyric that was sung loudest by the crowd that night came from this song:“'Cause why else would you want me? / I think I've got a fucked-up face / And that thought used to haunt me / 'Til I fell in its sweet embrace / Now I don't sweat the acne / It's a bitch, but it goes away.”
Songs pushing self-acceptance have permeated the pop sphere for decades, from Christina Aguilera's melodramatic “Beautiful” to Lizzo’s amp-up confidence pop, but Hobert’s take on the form feels especially resonant in an age of ubiquitous Ozempic and absurdist use cases of Facetune. Hobert’s lyrics — which generally revolve around the pain and thrill of desire — are not so much a brazen you got this, girl mantra, as they are authentic reflections on grappling with insecurity.
As I stood listening and swaying to the community singalong at Hobert’s show, I realized that a very particular emotional, musical itch was being scratched. In recent years I had a times felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of confessionalist singer-songwriter music being released, much of it firmly inspired by the likes of Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, both of whose distinct styles have become part of modern pop’s musical DNA (Swift for her musical monologues and Bridgers for her knack for her specificity of detail). Hobert, clearly inspired by and in musical conversation with both, offers her own spin at singer-songwriter pop: one rooted in the rhythms of comedy and plotlines. Each of Hobert’s songs feel like a tight sitcom episode, with tension and resolution. It even has a laugh track in all of us, as Hobert consistently offers up one-liners that beckon guffaws. The music is vulnerable, yes, but it is also reliably entertaining.
Does its crowd-pleasing quality make Hobert the titular clown of her album title, Who’s the Clown? Not necessarily. In its relatability and universality, in its in-on-the-joke quality, Hobert’s music renders all of us the clown. It’s not embarrassing, though, to be a jokerster in this universe. At Brooklyn Paramount, we were all in on the joke together, singing along in the collective circus.
Jackie Verba