Mei Semones at Barboza
A stark contrast from the night before with mosh pits and crowd surfing hosted by punk/metal band Scowl playing the cozy downstairs Barboza. This night was filled with relaxing chats about violins, violas, and the audience swaying from side to side to the bossa nova inspired tunes of both LionMilk and Mei Semones. With her debut EP Tsukino releasing in 2022, Mei Semones has said that being raised Japanese American and creating bilingual Japanese and English songs have helped her find a voice of her own as an artist. While hanging out at the front of the venue and chatting with other fans, I found out another person had similarly discovered her through her Brooklyn-based Live at the Birdhouse recorded sessions.
After an hour of waiting, our first act takes the stage. After his first song he mentions that he hasn’t yet told us his name but then teases us by refraining from giving it to us yet. But don’t think that he doesn’t care, as he consistently checked in on the audience with questions like “Has everyone had enough water today?” It’s roughly at this point that I notice Mei sheepishly watching from the door that leads from the green room to the stage while trying not to be too obvious and let anyone notice what she’s doing. A few songs in, we’re finally given a name; LionMilk.
LionMilk continues with a song that has him repeating “What the f*ck am I supposed to do?” over and over again. With a bit of introspection, he responds to himself suggesting that community is what you’re supposed to do, especially in our current political climate. He reiterates that music is community, and coming to shows, sharing music, and helping your community is how we get through this and fight back together.
To close out his set, he asks the audience if anyone knows Portuguese and a silence falls over the crowd. Recalling the only thing I remember from my trip to Porto I shouted, “Obrigado”. LionMilk translated to the audience that I said, “Thank You” and mentioned that he wrote an entire song in Portuguese using Google Translate.
As Mei Semones takes the stage with her band including a bassist, drummer, violist, violinist, and what seems to be her trusty pink water bottle, the crowd erupts in cheers. As she goes into her first song, Mei’s voice is strikingly close to her recorded tracks. This isn’t a bad thing, as even though it has a similarity, it has an extra quality that pulls you even more into a sense of ease and relaxation. With more artists like Mei Semones and Laufey including jazzy inspirations and backing strings to their acts, going to shows really feels like comfort, community, and therapy that LionMilk mentioned in his act. Mei not only pulls from inspirations like Chet Baker and John Coltrane, but at one point calls out that she has a song inspired by Seattle’s own Nirvana.
Midway through the set, Mei treats the crowd to at least two unreleased songs. The first one being “Itsumono” which should be released in the next month or two. I didn’t quite catch the name of the second one, but she did mention it translated to “darkness” in Japanese. Possibly Ankoku or Shikkoku from my attempted googling, but we’ll have to wait until the fall to find out for sure. As a fan of listening to music in different languages and from different countries, I appreciate when artists can introduce fans to lyrics they may not fully understand. With the beautiful mix of cultures this country has, and the rise of K-Pop and Bad Bunny obsessions, there’s so much more room to explore when you open yourself to a similar cultural exploration in music.
Celebrating their final show of the US tour, Mei mentions that they’d love to get rid of as much merch as possible as they’d be making their way to Japan and beyond in a couple days. Not only that, they even offered a sale on their bassist amp cabinet. If you were lucky enough to be free at noon the day after the show, unlike me, the band was also recording their own KEXP Live In-Studio session and invited the crowd to come get a spot to watch. After a short encore, the show closes out and Mei joins the merch table for some joyful photo ops and conversation with fans.
While waiting at the light rail, I ended up running into the people I was originally chatting with at the show. They were ecstatically talking about how amazing the show was and saying that this was their 2025 show of the year. But I’d say don’t count out 2026 and beyond, as it feels like Mei’s waves are just starting to ripple out to more and more fans.
