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Elephant's Graveyard Tunage: Ichiko Aoba Concert
- Elephant's Graveyard
- May 13
- 4 min read
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Friendly Hello and Introduction!
Hello hello hello everyone!! I hope you're doing well and having a great start to your summer! I finally finished packing up and moving back home, and all of my school work for the semester! But during all this chaos, I was able to see Ichiko Aoba on May 6th at Thalia Hall, courtesy of UIC Radio :-) I'm very lucky to have this opportunity to see her work, and write about my experience seeing her live!!
Now that the semester is over, I will be transitioning my writing from here to my Substack that I've set up, and my first post will go up next Saturday, May 17th! If you happened to enjoy my blog, it would mean a lot to me if you continued to read my posts and support me!
I've also been wanting to expand on my creative freedom and possibly start making video essays/YouTube videos, so if I choose to expand on it further, I'll provide information on that later. So! I think it's appropriate for me to get into my experience seeing Ichiko Aoba now!
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My Experience
This was my first concert with UIC Radio, as well as my first concert at Thalia Hall, so I was super nervous and excited. I initially planned to go entirely by myself--which is ideal for an Ichiko Aoba concert in my mind, it's a good self-date, but I found out that a good friend of mine had bought tickets and was traveling up to see her perform, so we got to see her perform together, which was so fun!
I would say I have an appreciation for Ichiko Aoba, I'm nowhere near close to die-hard fans, just simply because I haven't dedicated as much time to her music as others, but her live experience has made her music grow on me more than I thought it could!!
I absolutely loved the ambiance with the lamps and the rugs; it felt very intimate and personal. Ichiko Aoba and her opener--Gia Margret--were incredibly warm and interactive with the crowd, in a way that I've never experienced with live music before. Partly due to the fact that I don't see a lot of folk artists live, however, it was still wonderful to experience.
Gia was notably nervous, and said that this was her first time performing since 2020(? Five years), and the crowd was very supportive! Gia Margret's music isn't something that's my main genre, but it was wonderful to experience live, and she was a great performer. Near the end, she had a fun interactive Q&A where people got to ask things like what inspired her work, to funny and silly questions like if Gia would sign their Yo-yo.
When Ichiko came up on stage, she
had such a wonderful, warm, beautiful presence. She spoke so kindly to everyone, expressed her love for the audience and her crew that she's been touring with, and was overwhelmingly positive. Her music sounded better live than anything I've listened to on my phone, it felt like she was effortlessly performing the most beautiful, intricate guitar I'd ever heard. Then her voice!! Oh my god, her voice was heavenly, she has such a way when she sings that brought me to tears, I was so overwhelmed with positive feelings, and the calm, warm, intimate atmosphere really made me feel like I was safe and home.
One of my favorite songs she had performed was actually during her encore, it was Sayonara Penguin. I hadn't heard this song of hers before, and it was so cute, light, and fun! She had started singing in this cute penguin voice that was so adorable, and near the end, she made a joke where the penguin turned into a fly, and she ate it! so so cute and fun :) I found someone who uploaded the song from the same concert, so I'll be linking that here if anybody else wants to see her performance.
Overall, I had a wonderful time. She played a beautiful set, had wonderful crowd interaction, the crowd was very interactive with her, someone had given her flowers at the end of her concert, and many people were very friendly with me! I had somebody come up to me and tell me they loved my Chiikawa keychain that I have on my purse, which was so fun to meet other Chiikawa fans :-) I had also done a fun makeup look inspired by her album cover Luminescent Creatures.
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Closing Notes
I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has shown me support in this blog. I've always had a passion for media and writing, and to be able to find an outlet and community has been such a blessing. I feel so grateful to have made so many friends, and all of you made my first year here at UIC and UIC Radio worthwhile. You make me feel like I belong :-) I'm excited to see what next semester's blogs have in store, and in the meantime,,
H.A.G.S!!!
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