Sofia Isella: ‘HER DESIRE, THE NEMESIS TOUR’ Review
By Iain McLean
Sofia Isella, currently on her global tour, stopped in Glasgow on Wednesday and instantly showed why she deserves a bigger stage.
Isella, who was last seen in the city back in August at SWG3’s ‘TV Studio’, instead played this time at the O2 Academy, a deserving next step for someone this musically talented. Throughout the show, she once again flexed her skills with different instruments, from the bass guitar to the keyboard and even added a banjo to the mix while playing hits from across four EPs.
During a brief performance of ‘The Well,’ she invited her childhood violin teacher onstage, and the two shared an intimate moment of playing in spectacular synchrony.
She also stepped up her crowd engagement, this time inviting three young girls onto the stage to hold the microphone. At the same time, she played her acoustic ballad ‘Evergreen Soldier’, a song about a long-distance relationship she had as a teenager.
Isella was once again only joined by her mother, who, with the help of a new sound technician, kept the show flowing, suffering only one minor technical hiccup when Sofia’s electric guitar failed to play during a solo in the second half of the show.
This is a talent of Isella’s; no matter what, she knows exactly how to keep the crowd fully engaged when energy starts to wane. Whether it’s challenging one side of the venue to be louder than the other, directly engaging with her fans in the front row during the song “All of Human Knowledge Made Us Dumb”, or getting among the crowd during her encore performance of “Hot Gum”, which even saw her perform on top of the bar.
This rapport with the crowd was on display when she got into an argument with the Glasgow crowd over how to begin crowd surfing, with the crowd shouting at her to jump while she remained adamant that she would get security to “flop her onto them gently”. This drew laughs from the entire venue.
The show was a masterclass on how to engage, include and interact with your audience, something many artists struggle with, all the while showing exactly what you’re capable of musically.
Even when faced with the potential frustration of her guitar failing to play the solo, she recovered and kept the crowd engaged for what would have been the duration of the solo by once again singing to the front row.
The highlights of the night, going by crowd reaction, were “Hot Gum”, “All of Human Knowledge Made Us Dumb”, “Above the Neck”, “Everybody Supports Women” and “The Doll People”.
This next step for Isella was truly well deserved, as reflected in her merch sales, as she once again held a meet-and-greet for the first 200 people who bought anything. I arrived at the venue 15 minutes late, and by the time I got there, the meet-and-greet bands were already gone.
Two hundred merch sales in 15 minutes is an amazing accomplishment for any artist, especially one that’s arguably not even reached the prime of her music career.
Isella remains one of the best performers I’ve seen live, with undeniable on-stage magnetism. The multi-instrumentalist virtuoso delivered an experience not even mainstream bands can match.
Sofia Isella is an artist with nothing to stop her. This well-deserved, meteoric rise places her among other feminist rage and dark grunge artists such as Melanie Martinez, Billie Eilish, KiNG MALA, and one of Isella’s key influences, Fiona Apple and Amanda Palmer.