Miya Folick at Seventh Street Entry (09-29-23)

Tour Dates September 30—Chicago, IL—Lincoln Hall October 2—Toronto, ON—The Great Hall October 5—Brooklyn, NY—Music Hall of Williamsburg October 6—Allston, MA—Brighton Music Hall October 7—Washington, D.C.—The Atlantis October 8—Philadelphia, PA—The Foundry October 10—Atlanta, GA—Vinyl October 11—Nashville, TN—The Blue Room October 14—Austin, TX—Austin City Limits Read More Miya Folick Los Angeles’s vocalist, songwriter and producer Miya Folick will be headlining the 7th Street Entry on September 29th. The musician have been around since 2015 with her debut EP Strange Darling. Her debut album Premonitions ...

It was a full crowd at Seventh Street and they were quite receptive to the two artists who both draw inspiration from the Icelandic Björk, but found ways to carve out their own musical identity.

Babebee opened the evening. They’s birth name is shrouded in mystery, starting as a musical project in 2020 when they decided, “The artist side of me was like, ‘My real name is dead. I gotta come up with a new one.’”

So Babebee drew inspiration from a Kirby internet meme in which the Nintendo video character has a revelation when it says, “I’m Baby.”

Babebee’s musical is lush, experimental dance music that could be made in the bedroom. In fact, most of the instrumentation came from a computer while Babebee sang and Mitchell played the drums.

Babebee sang “Sunset Boulevard” from her EP Tainted in Our Memories, a song about moving to LA and realizing that it is not the dream most think it is. She also sang “Come with Me”, which will be the first song on an upcoming EP to be released in November on Lauren Records.

Miya Folick next took the stage with a pink-enameled guitar as she howled “Give It to Me” from her eponymous EP.

Folick has one of the more unusual musical backgrounds. She is half Russian and half Japanese. The first musical instrument she learned was the taiko drum at her Buddhist temple. She went to NYU to study acting, graduated from USC with a degree in theater, then realized that she didn’t much care for the process of obtaining acting roles. So she put a want ad on Tinder to look for a band, as she told the BBC:

"I realised that most people in LA were on Tinder and, of those people, many were probably musicians - so I just made a profile that said 'looking for a band' and put my Instagram handle on it.”

It worked. She formed a band, produced the eclectic Premonitions, toured with Bishop Briggs and even dated KFlay. But it wasn’t all glamour. In fact, there was quite a bit of struggle: Quitting drugs, breaking up, switching labels and having her father pass away.

Her latest album Cockroach is a culmination of those events, and what Folick forged was a gritty determination.

Crush me under the weight
Bitterness, jealousy, hate
'Cause I'm a fucking cockroach
And you can't kill me

A fan favorite was “Shortstop” with an ending that had Folick’s voice doing a call and response with the synthesizer, the two sounding like two dolphins communicating with each other.

“Sometimes I can’t stop talking and sometimes I feel rather shy,” Folick said between songs. She didn’t converse much throughout the evening. But when she played the bouncy “Get Out of My House” you knew that she wasn’t going to be shy about it.

Babebee Babebee Miya Folick

Miya Folick at 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (29 Sep 2023)

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