Tuesday night at Franklin Music Hall was nothing short of fantasy and enchantment. The stage held space for a lush forest imagined by multi-faceted LA artist Suki Waterhouse, who basked under the sparkle of an enormous disco ball and a foreboding, tall spider web center stage. Waterhouse, WXPN’s November Artist To Watch, playfully reveled in the inescapable buzz of excitement.
Now touring Memoir of a Sparklemuffin, released in September, the album unraveled on Tuesday night, as if the fantastical essence of the songs and album art had come alive. It felt like a portal had been opened.
Bully | photo by Megan Matuzak for WXPN
Waterhouse tapped Bully as the opener for the Memoir of Sparklemuffin tour. Alicia Bognanno, singer/guitarist of Bully, was the first to walk onto the stage. A spotlight and her guitar, she performed a solo performance of “Magnitude of You,” a song that made its set debut a few days prior.
An emotionally fraught show, Bully wore their hearts on their sleeves for the Franklin Music Hall audience while they showcased 2023’s Lucky For You. Live, many songs felt like an intrinsic truth — like “How Will I Know,” a song with a verse about regret that goes “And I can’t take back all the things I did when I was young, but I still beat myself up the same way over what I’ve done…”
The set ended with another solo performance and a new song, a piano version of “Atomic Bomb.” Bongnanno then previewed Suki Waterhouse’s set, “You guys are going to have fun.”
Suki Waterhouse | photo by Megan Matuzak for WXPN
The stage was back lit as a soothing male narrator eloquently established the lore further, connecting Waterhouse with the Sparklemuffin, a colorful and dancing spider. As Waterhouse and her band navigated the stage to their spots, the crowd roared. If the floor wasn’t concrete, it would have been shaking.
Waterhouse’s charm and tireless fervor were at its peak, whether she was strutting across the stage, kicking high or tenderly grasping the microphone during a slower track.
Waterhouse had her fun with banter, like the “cold open” to “OMG” or her teasing the crowd, “I can’t help but be nonchalant…” before going into the track by the same name. She kept the audience on their feet: throwing in a piano version of her first ever music release, a single titled “Brutally” from 2016.
Suki Waterhouse | photo by Megan Matuzak for WXPN
Franklin Music Hall sang along through the whole set, but there were songs that were more vivid. “To Love” was one of those and the echoing chorus had shivers down all spines intensity, likely causing goosebumps. The audience also knew every last word to “Moves” off Waterhouse’s first full length, I Can’t Let Go.
Waterhouse and Tuesday night’s audience at Franklin Music Hall seemed equally starstruck. She showered the crowd with compliments, telling them they were iconic. In a way swept up by it all, she had to express how it touched her heart saying, “I can’t believe I get to do this.”
Suki Waterhouse continues her tour this weekend in Boston, Montreal, and Toronto, before heading south to play her final gigs of the year; she’s taking the first part of 2025 off, returning for festival season, and full dates can be found here. Check out more photos from Franklin Music Hall and the setlist from the show below.