I remember seeing the advertising for Laundry Day’s Saturday night show everywhere on campus, and I remember thinking that their lead singer looked like Andy Samberg and Aaron Taylor-Johnson had a really cool baby. So at 7 p.m. on the dot, I braved the hike up Libe Slope from West Campus to Central, hearing the beginning of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” and feeling the bass of the speakers through the thin leather of my flip-flops.
I’m not usually a fan of covers, but honestly, hearing Super Madame’s interpretation of Lana Del Rey’s “Norman fucking Rockwell” blew me away. Covering Lana songs can be really difficult because she has a very unique soft but powerful register, which is exactly why it’s extremely easy to tell if her unreleased songs posted on Spotify podcasts are actually her or an impersonator. I think lead singer Amalia Schneider did an amazing job at making the song her own. Lana’s head voice is a difficult thing to nail and I think Schneider has such a strong head voice that the song didn’t sound out of place. I also appreciated the band’s unconventional approach to the instrumentals of the song, as they incorporated a sort of electronic sound reminiscent of Radiohead, which isn’t surprising as Schneider proudly proclaimed that their music was for “sad bitches.” With that being said, seeing a clarinet on stage during that number gave me a certain nostalgia back to my marching band days, but also clued me in to the fact that throughout the whole set, the band members had been switching around instruments — drums to guitar, then guitar to clarinet, and then back to guitar again. Although the act itself is not uncommon, it was electrifying to see a band focus on musicality and the instruments so much that they were more than willing to adapt to whatever melodies and instruments a song required.
Super Madame also blew me away with their original songs. “Holy Water” and “Dream Underwater” have a certain atmospheric and dreamy quality that had me wondering if the members had gone to the Title Fight School of Music instead of Cornell. “Holy Water” might be my favorite song purely because its chords remind me of a slowed down and morose version of Radiohead’s “Electioneering,” only with a more gospel-like sound.
There is something distinctly teenage about a Laundry Day concert. Maybe it was the middle fingers in the air. Maybe it was the headbanging, jumping, dramatic love songs, the almost Disney Channel Original style instrumentals or because Jude Lipkin had obviously mastered the 2010s whiny pop rock sound.
Whatever it was, Laundry Day distinctly feels like an attempt to resurrect the charm and chaos of being young and without responsibilities.
Courtesy of Karlie McGann/Senior Editor
“No Go” was probably my favorite song of the night. Other than reminding me of 2000s movie theme songs like “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World and “Dirty Little Secret” by The All-American Rejects, the headbanging and flailing across the stage were also reminiscent of the bands from DIY shows I saw in my hometown. The emphasis on the drums, predictable yet fun chord progressions, the rap elements in the bridge and Lipkin’s slightly nasally delivery give it a teenage urgency, where every emotion feels much more consequential than it is. Ultimately, Laundry Day understands that half the fun of being in a band is not taking yourself too seriously.
That feeling makes a lot more sense considering that the band has been together since high school. Laundry Day was like the band your older brother created in 2012 in the garage after developing a Green Day obsession, which just happens to be my niche. The recklessness and unpolished nature of their sound make their performances feel so much more intimate, because you get the sense that they would play with the same amount of enthusiasm regardless of whether there were thousands of people in front of them or 10 people in someone’s basement.
Courtesy of Karlie McGann/Senior Editor
The night ended with a more mellow rendition of “FRIENDS,” the song that I and probably most of the crowd had been anticipating. I knew the song from the season three finale of On My Block, where we see the friendship between Monse, Caesar, Ruby and Jamal come to an end and how their lives are irrevocably changed by the split. That ensured that the show — and song — had been permanently intertwined with my own feelings of regret over my own middle school friendship split, and the sadness that came with realizing that socioeconomic circumstances will dictate, and almost always accelerate, how quickly you have to grow up. Ending the set there made the theme of the performance undeniably clear: being young can feel completely unserious while being devastatingly serious at the same time.
Laundry Day didn’t give the most polished or ‘coolest’ performance, but I don’t think I would have wanted it to. Maybe the point is not to make adolescence look cooler in retrospect, but to make you miss how uncool it was.
Tami Omole is a member of the Class of 2029 in the Brooks School of Public Policy. She is a contributor for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at ofo3@cornell.edu.
