Illuminati Hotties Stomp Through Music Hall of Williamsburg

October 24, 2022

Illuminati Hotties – Music Hall of Williamsburg – October 22, 2022

“Do people in New York not mosh?” one guy at the Illuminati Hotties show asked another. He and his companion were visiting from the Bay Area, I overheard him say. By the end of the night, the crowd proved to him that they did. Los Angeles’s Illuminati Hotties can be hard to get a read on: They’re a lot of different bands at once — a little punky, yes, but also beachy, a little glitchy, more than a little silly. At various points throughout the set, Sarah Tudzin was accordingly playing the frontwoman role in a bunch of different ways. On one song she’d be a fire-breather, then she’d spit, then she’d lead a sing-along, then she’d summon a courtly esteem and announce to the audience: “It’s so very good to be with you tonight.”

So how do you make heads or tails of it all, how do you catch a vibe in an unceasing, mercurial vibe shift? Well, if Illuminati Hotties are known for anything, I’d say that it’s wringing a certain pathos out of their high silliness. At Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday night, Sarah Tudzin’s L.A. quartet stomped their way through cuts from both the band’s albums, especially from their un-toured 2021 breakthrough, Let Me Do One More. Its pop-punky lead single, “Pool Hopping,” brought down the house, “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” was another sing-along, and closer “Free Ppls” finally got the moshing going, satisfying that guy from the Bay Area. The through line? As she says on “Pool Hopping,” They’re all rippers. —Adlan Jackson | @AdlanKJ