Starling, Wednesday and a Taste of Cryogeyser at The Lodge Room 28.mar.25 cold and gray slowcore, punk, loudcore, emo, rock, shoegaze, contrygaze, indie, country

i feel i must begin by saying, thank you Lodge Room for $13 niiice draft beer. i hate spending $14 on modelo at a venue (re: my experience at The Fonda last month). bonus points because it was a very very yummy hefeweizen.

okay so to be entirely honest, i never finished this review. I took notes on my phone during and after the show, as well as reviewed my few videos to start writing. but i never got past that stage. so i'm writing this on december 31st of 2025, trying to just catch up on my 2025 music reviews and have my blog a little closer to being complete (it is a 2026 resolution of mine to spend more time here again)

alex and i admittedly came to this show solely to watch Karly perform. We saw Wednesday at Newport Folk Fest summer of 2024 and it was genuinely life changing for me. i was already familiar with wednesday's music (i started listening to them during the height of lockdown, i think at that point they only had i was trying to describe you to someone out) but i hadn't really revisted their stuff much since. i'm not sure i had even listened to Rat Saw God all the way thru before seeing them at Newport. regardless, i was super excited for their set with the limited knowledge i had of who they were

the newport set changed my whole outlook on what music could look like for someone like me and how it can be used. this is truly so stupid sounding coming from someone who was obsessed with Bikini Kill and Hole as a teenager. but growing up in a super rigid Latina household, hopelessly committed to my grades and rewarded with an Ivy League degree, i never considered what my life could look like if i took my passions and hobbies seriously, if i invested in them like they were my life (which they are, but i had so wholly invalidated that for years that i was morbidly depressed and stagnant after graduating in december of 2023). in college, i considered visual art for a while, and i eneded up maoring in studio, but as sson as the pandemic hit i became convinced that shit was impossible for someone like me in a world like this, where everything social was imploding and there seemed to be no need for art anymore. it's why i decided to become a teacher (at that point, i though teachers were essential workers. now with AI, im not sure classroom learning will continue to exist for the masses in the next 100 years). Karly's art and stage presence is the antithesis to all these fucking insane conspiracy ideas i had been having for years. Karly's dedication and commitment to herself, to being th emost authentic version of herself and pursuing that and music and tattoos and art fucking relentlessly... i hadn't seen someone do that in such a fucking real way since maybe high school. i was gagged for weeks after seeing their show. i manically considered what my life would be like if i was that liberated. i panicked under the insane routine and guise and rule chasing i had been blindly invested in for years. i suffocated on my lease, my contract, my late filing taxes... i feel like the set was the start of a near psychosis that ruled over me for at least another 6 monthes and made me question and dispose of so so many things...

i've said nothing of the music and only of the impact. but i'll avoid describing newport because i don't want to confuse shows. i want to focus on Karly at the lodge room, and i'll get there, but not without talking about Starling first.