Secondhand Setlists

A few nights ago, at Los Angeles’ Echo, I finally learned the correct pronunciation of ‘Oklou.’ It’s “okay-loo” – a fascinating development, as if anything about Marylou Manyiel’s sound is just alright. Amidst echoing, cavernous productions, she punctuates the expanse with synths and her voice, a slithering, chromed-out croon that, for all its artifice, seems to pull in the natural world around it. At once moment, it is stately and majestic (“galore”) at others shrunken and almost wounded (“I didn’t’ give up on you.”)

For one thing, the prominent props of her set included barren trees, whose bark peeled away to reveal an orange glow beneath. To me, Oklou’s whole persona is encapsulated in the “unearth me” video, where the singer exhumes sounds and lights from the ground beneath her. Her music’s fey-ish undertones, the playful synths with the timbre of fanfare trumpet, the way melodies bubble with emotion and heat, only enhance the effect.

She constructed those sounds herself, using her keyboard and, later, a guitar, to construct these spacious, tender songs. I should have expected it, but these tracks truly gained a ton of juice when you hear them live. The aforementioned “unearth me” washes over you in a wave, while the cooing “entertnmnt” lingers in the air like an echo (no pun intended). Huddled in the close quarters of the venue, it felt like you’re becoming privy on a secret ritual. The energy suited what Oklou described as the world within her mixtape, Galore (2020), “a universe that doesn’t exist: a place where I would be alone singing and writing.” For an hour, she let us into that world, and I’d gladly return again if she’d have me.