TV Girl at Jacksonville
ANASOFIA GIRARDOT | OCTOBER 25, 2021 | ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
The bubblegum pop music of the 1960s may have burst as soon as it emerged, but TV Girl has somehow resurrected the vintage melodies in a less saccharine and more jaded format. The band hailing from Los Angeles, California, and fronted by singer and songwriter Brad Petering is venturing across the United States for their long-awaited “6 and ½ French Exit Anniversary Tour,” already making it to the East Coast. Although TV Girl performed in well-known cities such as Houston and Atlanta, they decided to list Jacksonville on their tour roster as a pleasant surprise, since most popular indie bands tend to skip it on their tours.
The minute I entered the concert venue located in the heart of downtown at around 8:20 p.m., a teeming crowd of teenagers and twenty-year-olds surrounded the cornered stage like the opaque clouds of smoke around us. It seemed as if everybody was about to go into a frenzy as TV Girl was about to arrive in just 10 minutes. We were majorly disappointed as the opening artist Jordana stumbled onto the stage twenty minutes late and delivered acoustic covers of her romantically-tinged songs for an already impatient audience. The slow procession of pink and blue stage lights, the same hues found on TV Girl’s “Who Really Cares” album cover, along with the gargantuan cutout of an unknown woman in the backdrop, served as a painful reminder of the band’s continued absence.
By the time Jordana thanked the crowd and exited the stage, the suffocating nicotine smoke and perspiration had already tired out the crowd before being surprised by TV Girl’s arrival. Even though it was a moment of celebration for the approximately 400 people in attendance, it abruptly ended once Petering introduced his rather pretentious persona that seemed to be an impression of The Smiths lead singer Morrissey, minus the British accent or charm. If there was enough air conditioning and water available to keep the audience sane, nobody would have tolerated both his tardiness and unlikeable personality that only halted the performance everybody was waiting for.
But once the actual concert began with “Pantyhose,” the first song on the “French Exit” album, all of the struggles to reach this moment suddenly evaporated as the band performed. For an entire hour, TV Girl played their combination of remixed 60s pop about scorned lovers, accompanied by marching-band styled drumming that captivated the impatient crowd. The songs, although similar in their musical roots formulated by TV Girl, vastly differed in tempo and mood as they explored different manifestations of the band’s main theme, the failure of romance, through slowed acoustics or rapid mechanical beats.
Contrasting these great musical characteristics however, the lyrics crafted by Petering often draw criticism for portraying a misogynistic view of women that either idolizes or villanizes them and dims the band’s potential for success. This aspect of their music was present in the concert and did draw me back from truly enjoying it, knowing that those songs were encouraging a very toxic perspective.
In a less problematic element of TV Girl’s performance, Petering’s slurred sentences that were supposed to hint at the next song’s title, accompanied by the lighthearted interactions with Jordana on stage, consistently appeared and added to the crowd’s enthusiasm. Even though their last song slowed the pace after playing an intense performance of their sleeper hit “Not Allowed,” the overall quality of the concert itself still wasn’t dimmed by this inconvenient finale.
After listening to an hour of good music, I still left with a sense of satisfaction knowing that I attended one of the best concerts in Jacksonville this year. Considering how the band’s superb performance of their songs and the audience’s lively reaction compensated for any issues, I would gladly endure the impatience and small venue just to experience another TV Girl concert.