Lalin St. Juste Live
Bandcamp @ the Moxy Hotel
2225 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland
April 12, 2024
As folks filtered into the lobby of the Moxy Hotel to see local musician Lalin St. Juste, Max from Bandcamp opened the evening with background on the organization’s 15-year history of supporting independent musicians and praise for “this luminary performance and this luminary artist.”
Sitting next to an altar of white flowers adorned with red and white candles and covered by a keffiya, St. Juste then participated in a pre-performance discussion with songwriter Dani Offline bout her new album and her process. She’s experimenting and playing with everything from her voice to technology and instruments, she said. She spoke of the band The Seshen that she sang with for years, her breakup with a fellow bandmate, and what that break-up did to the band, which did not sever their ties but guided them in finding new ways to be and create together. She told how she started singing as a child and the journey to knowing she was an artist and finding her voice, which she says is still developing. She noted how the process has been her life’s work and meant singing through fear and discomfort.
St. Juste is Haitian; her culture and heritage figure prominently in her music. She talked about the ancestral connections she experiences through her music and through language, about the musicality and cadence of Creole, which she is only now learning to speak and incorporate into her music. Their conversation wound down with St. Juste talking about what she’s working on now and its themes of self-love, self-discovery, and feeling free.
“I feel most free when I’m singing,” she said before she soared into song.
St. Juste stood tall on the stage in her pink lace-up reptile boots and sheer black pant suit. Her dreads piled on top of her head exposing her close-cropped undercut. She began with a haunting and sultry song focused on water that had an experimental vibe. The second song showed her vocal range and how she’s playing with music as she’d told us during the conversation — she was basically her own sound person.
“I woke up in a dream of dream,” began the first verse for the third song, which featured a solid baseline that pushed the music forward.
Her band, a guitarist and bassist, felt a little disconnected from her at first but by the end of the evening they felt cohesive and flowed. St. Juste used spoken word recordings in several songs, the syncopations and rhythms got the crowd’s heads bopping. One song started with a Maya Angelou quote about how love liberates, and was one of those songs you listen to on a Sunday afternoon as you drive down the PCH in a drop top.
Overall, the songs from this album ranged from experimental vibes to club mixes, R&B jams, and jazzy. St. Juste gave a wonderful performance, her powerful voice filling the space. Powerful enough to make me scan the QR code to buy her album.
You can check out Imbalance Chemicals @imbalanceofchemicals on IG, Band Camp @bandcampoakland, and Lalin @lalin_music.
