“Don’t you try to calm me down!” Alexandra Savior screamed towards the end of ‘Mystery Girl’, the closing song of the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter’s headline show at Williamsburg’s Baby’s All Right. She remained calm for the entirety of her 40 minute set, oozing retro cool from the moment she stepped onstage, but – if only for an instant – Savior got ferocious. Her stare could look right through you, all the more menacing as guitar feedback threatened to swallow her whole.
That being said, for the first 39 minutes of her set, her movements and stage banter were kept to a minimum. “I’m Alexandra Savior and these are my dudes,” she said before launching into slow-burning opener ‘Frankie’, a track that wouldn’t feel out of place on Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Humbug’. With only two solid red lights behind Savior and her backing band made up of members of the L.A. band PAPA, not much was going on throughout the set, fully allowing her sultry music to speak for itself. The crowd, mostly made up of industry folk was transfixed and silent, held in Savior’s palm for each of the nine tracks she performed.
Wearing a long-sleeved black turtleneck and a floral skirt, Savior’s presence recalled a period where Nico, Marianne Faithfull, and Françoise Hardy were musical fashion icons. After all, Savior’s song ‘Risk,’ the only song she’s released under her name at this point, plays like a modern version of Hardy’s ‘Le Temps de l’Amour’ if it were mixed at Josh Homme’s Rancho De La Luna studio in Joshua Tree. Though for all we know, it probably was.
Not much is known about Alexandra Savior and her show at Baby’s All Right did not do much to clear things up. If anything, her mysterious aura added more weight to the show, her first in New York. Her set ranged from 60s-esque lounge music like ‘Girlie’ to the L.A. desert rock of aforementioned single ‘Risk,’ which perfectly soundtracked True Detective last year. ‘Vanishing Point’ and ‘Mirage’ are readymade James Bond songs, prompting us to think, that she was born to write a Bond theme more than once throughout her performance. She effortlessly nails the aesthetic that Lana Del Rey so desperately sought; Savior seems to perform in a different world from everyone else, her detachment only adding to the interest and intrigue of the label execs in attendance.
Throughout most of the show, the crowd seemed to be waiting for her co-writer Alex Turner –who appeared onstage with Savior in Los Angeles just a week prior – to show up once again. In the end, it didn’t matter. Savior didn’t need him.
Alexandra played:
‘Frankie’
‘Bones’
‘Mirage’
‘Cupid Shoots To Kill’
‘Audeline’
‘Vanishing Point’
‘Girlie’
‘Risk’
‘Mystery Girl’
Photos by: Julia Drummond