It’s easy to be charmed by Say She She. I was out on a walk around my neighborhood in Mid City with KCRW on my headphones, to take in the sunshine all while I avoided the geology textbook on my desk, when I first listened to “Prism.” The titular track from their debut reeks of gentle, good-natured, brilliance. It’s a rose colored song, steeped in bliss. “Hm,” I thought to myself, “This must be how those Sirens tried to allure Odysseus in that one old Greek poem.”
I’ve been a devoted fan ever since that Autumn afternoon in 2022, and though I’ve spent hours under their spell, I still find myself hard pressed to explain their style or appeal to friends and strangers alike. They’re kind of like a girl group from the sixties and seventies. It’s pop sometimes, it’s R&B sometimes, it’s disco too, and—hard to believe—it’s operatic. They make beautiful music that’s easy on the ears, soft on the heart, and alive on the dance floor. I think the wonderful thing about Say She She is that they make perfectly packaged songs which transcend genre expectations, but they present them with such brilliant craftsmanship and uncanny ability that their genius can go unnoticed. All three vocalists are classically trained and this finesses into their performances in unexpected, magical ways.
Their first album attracted some much deserved critical appraisal, it’s a smooth half hour of soulful triumphs. For their sophomore effort, Say She She came out of left field. Delivered just about a year after Prism, Silver is an epic as far as lovelorn post-disco albums go. In fact, it’s a double-album that clocks in more than an hour’s worth of grooving synths, sticky guitar licks, and interwoven harmonies. The name Say She She is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the iconic seventies band Chic, and Silver sounds like it has Nile Rodgers’ fingerprints all over the place. It’s not a pastiche, however, but the continued development of a rarified and rather lost legacy.
When they announced a North American tour with a February show in Los Angeles, it felt as if they personally called on me to show up. Well, I wasn’t alone. Hundreds of others felt the same way, and The Regent downtown was overstuffed with teenagers, with grad students, and with retirees.
With boyfriends, with girlfriends, and with everyone else who fit in between them.
With married couples, with divorcées, with mothers, with daughters.
With loners who lurked around with a camera around their necks. Each with a yellow neon, glow in the dark wristband in regal blue light. Such is the case with Sirens, they lure everyone down to the ocean floor with their other worldly voices.
Say She She was paired up with a perfect opener, another artist who gifted us with a seminal album in 2023. Rahill’s Flowers At Your Feet is a personist expression of longing, belonging, and experiencing the varied corners of America as an Iranian-American. She mixes her songs with samples from home videos and dedicates each track to a friend or family member, as evident with intimate and anecdotal lyrics along the lines of a Frank O’Hara poem. I was introduced to her by a song titled “Fables,” a catchy collaboration with Beck. But, in my experience, an introduction to Rahill is only worth face value as each song has its own DNA. To listen to her is to get to know her. She brings together unique influences like jazz, hip-hop, and Persian music to create her sui generis blend of indie pop. Her vocals are plain-spoken, barely sung but delivered with honest melodies.
Rahill walked out and greeted everyone like a friend. There was an invisible wardrobe malfunction on the stage, and she immediately, self-deprecatingly apologized for mooning the crowd. It was naturally disarming. A special guest, Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records fame, joined her on keyboards and drums. The show started off like a conversation, a deep exchange which foregoes small talk in order to jump into a genuine heart to heart. Rahill talked about old friends, new friends, her sadness, and her father while hanging onto the microphone. She followed each detail with relatable songs, while she casually danced with her elbows or clapped her hands. Some highlights included “Futbol,” a rare celebration of sport in the guise of soft-spoken indie music. “Fables” was an energetic burst of joy, accompanied with the spectrum of the rainbow aglow on stage. Then there was the heartbreaker, “Ode to Dad.” Rahill shared that she wrote the song for her father, from whom she inherited an unbreakable will to stand up against oppression. To end her set, she performed a memorable cover of the Korean folk-rock ballad “Haenim” by Kim Jung Mi translated, by way of a secondhand English translation, into Farsi. It was a collaborative plea to gain a sense of clarity or calm in uncertain times, and everybody in the venue joined in to finish the song with its melancholy but melodic series of la la la’s.
There was an immediate spark of electricity when Sabrina Mileo Cunningham, Nya Gazelle Brown, and Piya Malik rushed onto the stage to the funky bass line of “Reeling.” All together they stretched out the high-pitched harmonies that introduced the track. Then, as the song got going and Piya sang her heart out, Sabrina’s and Nya’s quivering harmonies braided into each other as they traveled the acoustic framework of The Regent. Say She She’s magnetic stage presence was amplified by their static choreography. Neither of them left their symmetric stage positions, but they occasionally moved their arms in slow-motion and synchronized dances which mesmerized the crowds. High pitched screams often accompanied the songs from the depths of the throng that danced shoulder to shoulder on the sloping concert floor. Occasionally Piya would, in a jolt, shake her head and her long brown hair would whiplash. Nya would spread her arms and carry them overhead, her poofy sleeves made her look like a butterfly. What was most unbelievable about their performance was that, despite its palpably high energy, Say She She didn’t take any breaks between songs. They played an eighteen track set for over an hour straight, and never did people stop dancing or jumping or wooing. Everyone sang their hearts out when “Prism” came around. The haunting chants of “Forget Me Not” chilled to the bone, left goosebumps on the flesh. We all longed for our exes with “Never Say Never.” They sang, over and over, “meet my lover on the astral plane,” and I was there with them—I swear. We all were. It’s a bit of a cliché to claim that a band or a group sounds better live, but the nuances of Say She She are so clearly on display on stage that it’s impossible to revisit their albums afterwards without a newfound appreciation for their attention to sonic detail or their vocal prowess.
In ancient Greek times, the Sirens were considered dangerous because they irresponsibly enchanted people away from their boats only to be swallowed up by the sea. These may be considered myths, sure, but it doesn’t explain why I’ve been drowning since last Saturday night.
