Show Bar Presents
Maria BC
June 8, 2023
8:00 PM
Doors Open: 7:00 PM
Doors Open: 7:00 PM
More Information
TICKET PRICES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
GENERAL ADMISSION 21+: $12.00
TICKET SALE DATES
GENERAL ADMISSION 21+ Public Onsale: April 28, 2023 10:00 AM to June 8, 2023 12:00 AM
GENERAL ADMISSION 21+: $12.00
TICKET SALE DATES
GENERAL ADMISSION 21+ Public Onsale: April 28, 2023 10:00 AM to June 8, 2023 12:00 AM
W/ Yaara Valey
When Maria BC is singing, they feel as though they’re dissolving and soaring, all at once. Hyaline, the title of their debut full-length album, describes something that is clear and translucent like glass, especially a smooth sea. For the Ohio-born, Oakland, CA-based artist, songwriting is a stretched blank canvas awaiting the strokes of an exhale, and it’s this slow-moving process that rewards us the ease of a crystalline sky, without forgetting the clouds that may have come before it. A knife's-edge balance of intimacy and ambiguity, Hyaline accesses snapshots of grief, anxiety and wonder through a miscellany of specters: these are ghost stories, but not as we know them.
Growing up, Maria BC often found solace in spending time alone. They learned how to entertain themselves creatively, and the childhood practice of songwriting still deeply affects how they associate with music today. “It makes me cherish and revel in moments of being totally alone,” they explain. It’s through this sustained, quiet process that they learned they could access characters, or certain selves, when singing. Through the lens of a character, there came a safety in exploring topics that may otherwise be too painful or humiliating. Here, Maria BC can name the grief that stands outside oneself, and in doing so, turns a haunted shadow into something more tactile.
Opener “No Reason” evokes a hairpin bend, an epiphany, where a new character upends the daily lives of those who didn’t expect it. It’s a call to attention, a curtain raise. Elsewhere, “The Only Thing” brims with the full, effervescent, sun-is-coming-up feeling of new love, while the haunting strums of “Betelgeuse” investigates one’s role as a victim and the inescapable generational pull of familial patterns. “Good Before,” a song Maria BC wrote while on a highway drive watching the sun rise, showcases the songwriter’s pop sensibilities and their spur-of-the-moment magic. Later, “The Big Train” proves the power in simply naming something to lessen its weight, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it will provide an answer. It tells the story of a man haunted by his past mistakes, sauntering through darkness, before hearing the sound of a train the following morning. Darkness doesn’t have to be scary, or evil – it can be the seed under the soil, waiting to bloom between the cracks of concrete. Closer “Hyaline” encompasses this kind of hopeful attitude, where each character throughout the album sees a friend, or a lover, calling out to them. “I’m trying to beat down this individualist impulse that sometimes comes with creating a piece of art.”
It’s this power of reframing, of shaping our hardest citations, that alerts us to the present force of Hyaline. Citing poet Louise Gluck, Maria BC was inspired by the notion of the dreamer and the watcher archetypes. “The dreamer is always looking towards a future that can never happen, but the watcher is effectively present,” they say. “The way I can become more of a watcher is by putting it into music.”
When Maria BC is singing, they feel as though they’re dissolving and soaring, all at once. Hyaline, the title of their debut full-length album, describes something that is clear and translucent like glass, especially a smooth sea. For the Ohio-born, Oakland, CA-based artist, songwriting is a stretched blank canvas awaiting the strokes of an exhale, and it’s this slow-moving process that rewards us the ease of a crystalline sky, without forgetting the clouds that may have come before it. A knife's-edge balance of intimacy and ambiguity, Hyaline accesses snapshots of grief, anxiety and wonder through a miscellany of specters: these are ghost stories, but not as we know them.
Growing up, Maria BC often found solace in spending time alone. They learned how to entertain themselves creatively, and the childhood practice of songwriting still deeply affects how they associate with music today. “It makes me cherish and revel in moments of being totally alone,” they explain. It’s through this sustained, quiet process that they learned they could access characters, or certain selves, when singing. Through the lens of a character, there came a safety in exploring topics that may otherwise be too painful or humiliating. Here, Maria BC can name the grief that stands outside oneself, and in doing so, turns a haunted shadow into something more tactile.
Opener “No Reason” evokes a hairpin bend, an epiphany, where a new character upends the daily lives of those who didn’t expect it. It’s a call to attention, a curtain raise. Elsewhere, “The Only Thing” brims with the full, effervescent, sun-is-coming-up feeling of new love, while the haunting strums of “Betelgeuse” investigates one’s role as a victim and the inescapable generational pull of familial patterns. “Good Before,” a song Maria BC wrote while on a highway drive watching the sun rise, showcases the songwriter’s pop sensibilities and their spur-of-the-moment magic. Later, “The Big Train” proves the power in simply naming something to lessen its weight, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it will provide an answer. It tells the story of a man haunted by his past mistakes, sauntering through darkness, before hearing the sound of a train the following morning. Darkness doesn’t have to be scary, or evil – it can be the seed under the soil, waiting to bloom between the cracks of concrete. Closer “Hyaline” encompasses this kind of hopeful attitude, where each character throughout the album sees a friend, or a lover, calling out to them. “I’m trying to beat down this individualist impulse that sometimes comes with creating a piece of art.”
It’s this power of reframing, of shaping our hardest citations, that alerts us to the present force of Hyaline. Citing poet Louise Gluck, Maria BC was inspired by the notion of the dreamer and the watcher archetypes. “The dreamer is always looking towards a future that can never happen, but the watcher is effectively present,” they say. “The way I can become more of a watcher is by putting it into music.”
THIS EVENT IS 21+ AND GENERAL ADMISSION. NO MINORS.
ALL SALES ARE FINAL. PLEASE, DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ORDER BEFORE PURCHASING. NO REFUNDS.