Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York, NY — October 5, 2023

Miya Folick took to the stage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last Friday night with her guitar and her self-described favorite shirt reading “plotless fiction.” Folick told the crowd that plotless fiction was the perfect genre to describe what she loves to read and write: epics that take you on a journey where you don’t know what the end goal is, but you’re along for the ride. In a way, I think Folick’s performance followed the same path. She moved through an unpredictable flux of emotions, freezing time with songs like “Cartoon Clouds,” “Cockroach” and “Thingamajig,” and bringing waves of movement and dance to the crowd with songs like “Get Out of My House” and “What We Wanna.” Folick closed her set with a captivating ballad, putting her soul into the final notes of the song. It could have been the expected ending to the story, channeling the range of emotions throughout the show into one song. Instead, she returned for a captivating encore covering Joni Mitchell’s “River,” freezing time for one last moment before people returned to their daily lives.

Words & Photography: Justina Brandt