Del Water Gap at the Ventura Music Hall
By Sarah Fournell
I made the pilgrimage back to my hometown over summer break to find out my favorite local movie theater has closed (despite the marquee still saying “See U Reel Soon”) and some of my favorite restaurants have gone downhill, as expected. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a new venue had opened in downtown Ventura, and that some of my favorite artists decorated their summer lineup. I took a trip to the former bowling alley turned music hall last Friday night, June 25, to see Raffaella and Del Water Gap as their West Coast tour dwindled to an end.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Raffaella live twice, and although the setlist was the same at both shows, her performances were remarkably different. I first saw her open up for Maude Latour at the Sonia in Cambridge, MA in April, where she was comparable to the disco ball that illuminated the nearly full venue. In between each song, she cracked jokes and revealed intimate details of the song’s origins. However, her show at the Ventura Music Hall was encumbered by the darkness of the news headlines of the day, with every bit of media detailing the repeal of Roe v Wade. The hurt that has been felt by millions in the wake of the news could be seen on Raffaella’s face and in the brevity of her crowd interactions, especially when she addressed the distress she was feeling. Despite the emotional rain clouds of the day, Raffaella and her only counterpart on stage, Sara L’Abriola, who produces solo music under the name Hank, managed to charm the audience.
Raffaella moved like a clumsy gazelle on stage, with the gracefulness and awkwardness of her movements contradicting each other in a way that makes her insanely captivating to watch. Her demeanor was reminiscent of a fairy, not only due to her petite stature and cute outfit but because of the overall etherealness and impishness of the bright personality that she exuded on stage. Her voice was effortlessly dreamy; so sickly-sweet that she nearly left the audience in a sugar coma with her departure from the stage at the end of her set. Her face is wildly emotive when she sings, however it was when she turned her back on the audience to let out an inherently sassy shimmy that her personality truly shined. Her slower ballads like “Bruce Willis” and “Sororicide” were hauntingly seductive, while her more upbeat tracks like “Blonde” and an unreleased song about buying groceries were intensely playful. Her latest release, “Buick” was notably a crowd favorite, with the name drop of relatively local beach Point Dume exciting the kooks in the venue.
Del Water Gap electrified the stage the second he stepped foot on it, opening with the stirring “Better Than I Know Myself” under the glow of a neon sign depicting a crude drawing of a horse with a bowl cut. S. Holder Jaffe, the artist behind Del Water Gap, emanated an effortlessly cool yet nerdy vibe in his striped jumper and terminator glasses, prompting my little sister to say that he was “giving Uncle Joe,” referring to our dad’s brother who looks remarkably like Jaffe (but only when he has his sunglasses on). He approached the performance with a sense of lackadaisical relaxation, appearing comfortable, but still very careful about his presence behind the microphone. Jaffe’s brief yet congenial banter and lighthearted lyrical jabs such as “I don't care what people say/Robert Pattinson don't feel like me” from “Uh-Huh” created a friendly intimacy between him and the audience, compelling a community amongst the crowd. Despite “not feeling 100%” due to a cold, he managed to give an incredibly emotionally charged performance.
The intensity of hard-hitting tracks like “Hurting Kind” and The Neighbourhood-esque “Bug Bites” felt even stronger live, with the intimacy of the venue allowing for a more profound sense of vulnerability. This heightened intimacy made the songs feel more real in a sense, as if the tracks I had known and loved before didn’t exist prior to Jaffe breathing them into actuality on stage. He acted as a crypt keeper to vaults of unearthed emotion, with each vocal strain and whimper giving way to the hurt he writes about in his songs. The experiences he sang about– lost love, distance, fear– felt raw and new, as if the heartbreak-inflicted wounds were still very fresh.
The tears that glistened on my cheeks during songs like “It’s Not Fair” and “High Tops” were quickly replaced with sweat when he played more upbeat crowd favorites. The spaciousness of the venue gave me room to dance the way the songs deserved to be danced to, with the opportunity to utilize my full range of movement to thoroughly celebrate the joy I felt to be there. My sister and I skipped around arm-in-arm to “Perfume” and felt borderline whiplash from headbanging to their cover of Avril Lavinge’s “Complicated,” which we both agreed was somehow better than Olivia Rodrigo’s cover, which is also on her tour setlist right now. Every song performed felt wildly sincere, proving that Jaffe has a mastery over both joy and sadness in his songwriting, and an even more exceptional aptitude for performing them.
As they closed out the set with “Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat,” any sense of heaviness from the day, or feelings of loneliness depicted in the lyrics on the setlist disappeared for a second and gave way for pure exhilaration. When the house lights rose, I swore I felt the audience just breathe. As I joined the other stricken fans in the merch line in fawning over postcards of a shirtless Jaffe and eagerly purchasing Del Water Gap toothbrushes, I spoke to a super dedicated fan about how great the set was and I felt the power of live music beaming out of her smile. And while I realize how juvenile it is to reduce music to a cure-all, it simply was a remedy for pain that night.