Illuminated by pink and blue stage lights, indie rock singer and former GW student Eliza McLamb looked out to the audience as a hush fell over the crowd and posed a question.
Opening for British singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya last Monday at The Black Cat, a go-to venue for indie musicians near U Street, McLamb asked, “Is anyone here a GW student or alumni?” prompting a sprinkle of enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. McLamb said in an interview before her set that she was excited to play at The Black Cat for the first time, but it can be “weird” stopping in the District on a regional tour, as she attended GW from 2018 to 2021 to study political science before dropping out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Almost like crossing paths with a ghost of yourself,” McLamb said. “But I think that process is just something that is inherent to growing up, and I’m not as freaked out by that as I used to be.”
After the pandemic sent GW students off campus and shifted classes online in March 2020, McLamb started posting original music on her TikTok account and soon went viral, earning millions of views for songs she would write based on her followers’ prompts, like “crying alone in your car but feeling warm and therapeutic.”
She also chronicled her move from her home state of North Carolina to Los Angeles in 2020 by road tripping across the country and making stops to work at farms in Kansas and North Carolina in exchange for room and board.
McLamb ultimately garnered more than 300,000 followers on TikTok and went on to release a series of singles and two EPs: the 2020 “Memos” and the 2022 “Salt Circle.” Both EPs demonstrate McLamb’s vulnerable lyricism and indie rock sound and have accumulated millions of streams on Spotify.
Following the release of her debut album “Going Through It” in January, McLamb said she’s anticipating her next tour, in which she will headline 17 shows in cities across the East Coast, the Midwest and the South after finishing her stretch opening for Yanya, who blends genres like indie rock and psychedelia, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Toronto, Canada, on Oct. 5.
“I’m feeling super excited about that, too,” she said. “I feel like it’s a lot of smaller, kind of college towns, which will be a really nice vibe. You know, I haven’t had a good fall in a while because I’ve been in LA, so I’m hoping along my journey I can sample the fall of America.”
In August, McLamb dropped the single “God Take Me Out of LA,” which explores her homesickness for North Carolina and growing frustration with life in Los Angeles, where she would often feel “stuck in her car” due to the city’s lack of walkability compared to other major cities. McLamb’s folksy intonation layered over acoustic and pedal steel guitar give the single a country sound distinct from the rest of her discography.
McLamb said she was missing the shift of seasons on the East Coast and listening to a lot of country music while writing the song, as the music reminded her of her childhood in Carrboro, North Carolina.
“I was thinking about home, and even just singing that song, felt like it kind of brought me back closer to North Carolina, which was comforting to me at the time,” McLamb said.
McLamb said she doesn’t currently have concrete plans to release more music, but she will play some unreleased tracks on her headline tour starting this week on Oct. 10 in Hamden, Connecticut. As she continues writing new music, she said she listens to a lot of Americana, indie rock artists, like Wilco and MJ Lenderman, and plans to incorporate more reflections on her time in Los Angeles into her work now that she’s living in New York City after moving there over the summer.
“The more I think about my time in LA and the stuff I’ve been experiencing over the past year, in some ways, does kind of feel like one long bout of homesickness,” McLamb said.
While in Los Angeles, California, in 2020, McLamb also launched pop culture podcast “Binchtopia” with then-roommate and content creator Julia Hava. Nearly four years later, “Binchtopia” has garnered a devoted fanbase, with an average of 70,000 monthly listeners as of 2023 and close to 15,000 Patreon subscribers.
McLamb also has a successful Substack, “Words From Eliza,” where she pens essays and newsletters, sharing cultural criticism and reflecting on her own personal experiences, for her more than 20,000 subscribers since launching the blog in May 2021.
She tries to strike a balance in her work between vulnerability and the understanding that her audience is not directly connecting with her as a person, even if they dissect experiences she shares through her art, McLamb said.
“I have to just have a base knowledge that, no matter how much I put out there of myself, it’s ultimately my human emotional experience,” McLamb said.
McLamb’s opening set last week was an intimate and condensed collection of some of her best work. She opened with her song “Glitter,” in which she sings to an old friend from home pleading for her to leave an abusive boyfriend.
The set reached its pinnacle when she performed “Modern Woman,” a track of gripes about the mundanity and pressures of modern life, like having to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and being marketed as a “sad girl,” followed by a cover of Britney Spears’ “Lucky,” a track about the struggles of fame.
She closed with “Mythologize Me,” one of her most popular songs with more than 1 million streams, which appeared a big hit with the crowd as attendees danced to steady guitar riffs and sang along to McLamb’s sarcastic lyrics about being the “perfect image of a girl.”
First-year Violet Sheehan, a psychology student who attended McLamb’s set at The Black Cat, said she has been listening to McLamb’s music since first discovering her on TikTok in 2020. She said she attended the concert with another GW student who she randomly met in Kogan Plaza earlier this semester after noticing they were wearing a shirt from one of McLamb’s previous tours.
She said she had no idea McLamb attended the University before her friend mentioned it when they were on their way to The Black Cat. She screamed and “jumped up and down” when McLamb gave GW a shoutout during her set, Sheehan said.
“I was really excited to hear her mention that and just have a little connection with her,” Sheehan said.
Reflecting on her time at GW, McLamb expressed her appreciation for the music community at GW, saying her “one regret” was not being more involved. Ultimately, she realized college was not the right place for her at that time in her life, McLamb said.
“Roll… what do you say?” McLamb said, closing out the interview. “Raise high.”
