Photos and review by Jennie Book
@jenniebookphotography

Gigi Perez is to the Tik Tok manor born, but her breadth and skill belies that sometimes low-bar mantle, because her talent demands that she’ll be sticking around for a long career, which her October 21 show at The Wiltern in Los Angeles proved.

Perez came onstage with three bandmates, all of them smiling and having a great time, clearly happy to be backing a talented and rising young artist. The show was way more rocking than (I) anticipated; only knowing Perez previously from her megahit “Sailor Song” and a few other tracks I thought the night would be way more acoustic, but those bandmates were real rock musicians and Perez herself played a mean guitar and had the full-throttle pipes to go with it.

Her vocals were super strong over the 18-song set, with great range and tone. She played favorites like “Normalcy” that had a great guitar solo, was super rocking and then went mellow at the end, and then on “Glue” she said it meant a lot to her that the song still holds purpose, that she’s grown a lot since she wrote it, but it felt great to her that the fans still care about it. She did a Lana Del Rey “Video Games” cover duet with opener Hannah Jadagu, who had a great opening set in her own right, and also a duet on the Blondshell song “Arms” with Blondshell herself.

Three quarters of the night through, she spent a good eight minutes talking about “At The Beach, In Every Life,” and touched on how she’s going to need time to process what this year has held for her and how to register it. She said it’s been a blessing to share the songs she’s written from her personal experiences. She talked about losing her sister Celeste when Perez was 20, and she’s 25 now, and how nothing can prepare you for loss like that, and how it’s taken her years to understand what she’s been through. She talked about how in a lot of ways her music and the fans and community have saved her life, and how it’s good to be loved despite our grief and our failures.

The last songs of the night, “Chemistry” and “Sailor Song” really saw her come into her own, moving around the stage, completely at home inside her talent while in the spotlight, and the crowd was right there with, her enjoying every moment.

Gigi Perez’s North American tour ended with this show, but for all the latest news and information, check out www.gigiperezmusic.com and @gigi4perez