Live Review: Ella Vos - Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver 22/03/2019
This weekend Ella Vos bought her delightful and airy vocals to Vancouver’s Biltmore Cabaret as part of her Watch & Wait tour, with support from Clara Mae.
Sweden is known for being home to a slew of insanely talented and fun pop artists, and Clara Mae is no exception. Her presence on stage is warm and inviting, while simultaneously demanding of your attention, which is possibly due in part to being active in the music industry since 2008. She adopted the name Clara Mae in 2014, and released her first single Changing Faces. Since then she has released numerous singles as well as co-writing with artists such as Kream.
If the crowd weren’t already fans of Clara Mae before, there’s no chance that they aren’t after seeing her perform live. In between playing her own songs, such as I’m Not Her and Lost, she also sang her rendition of Robyn’s Call your Girlfriend, which has currently got over four million plays on Spotify) and a solo rendition of Taped Up Heart, which she originally sang with Kream.
Next up it was finally Ella Vos’ turn to grace the stage with her angelic presence and voice. We caught her last year at Bumbershoot, but this show is an entirely different beast, in terms of the vibe at least. The room was packed and warm, full of excited people ready to sing along to some incredible lyrics and maybe even cry a little bit. Right from the get go Ella’s stage presence exudes joy as she dances around the stage, with the lighting helping to make everything feel ethereal and bright.
With a stacked set list she got right into it, kicking it off with Ocean, the second single off of the tour’s namesake EP, Watch & Wait. As she sang both new and old songs it was clear that she feels at home on stage with a couple hundred people singing her songs back to her, as she held their hands and sang with them the entire show. She laughed with everyone as she forgot the words from having so much fun.
She also took moments to retreat inward though, as she slowed things down for her cover of Billie Eilish’s When The Party’s Over and her own Lonely Road. It’s clear that the songs she writes come from real emotions and situations that she’s going through, especially so with the Watch & Wait EP that beautifully chronicles her experience with and treatment for lymphoma.
It takes a lot of talent to create such beautiful songs about some truly heavy topics, but it’s a talent that Ella Vos certainly holds. If you want to experience it first hand, make sure to catch Ella and Clara as they tour together throughout the rest of March and April across the USA and Canada.
Words and photos by Kelli Anne