Michael Seyer has brought back his most popular album, Bad Bonez, for its sixth anniversary, playing the entire album live. Seyer even had to write live renditions for some songs on the album which had never been performed before. Elsewhere Zone One provided the perfect setting for this show as an intimate crowd of a couple of hundred fans gathered Sunday, April 14, for a concert filled with soft vocals and fan interaction. It was an experience you can rarely find with an artist of Seyer’s size.
Seyer has a strong following in New York City and has played shows across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Buffalo almost every year since 2018, excluding 2020 for obvious reasons. In 2021, Michael Seyer accompanied Men I Trust on their Untourable Album Tour across the US. At their two sold-out shows at Brooklyn Steel, the audience instantly recognized he had something special. His soft dream pop vocals and RnB-inspired instrumentation matched well with the sound of Men I Trust.
Seyer, now on his own headliner tour, brought out fellow California-based artist Sundiver Ca to open. You may know Sundiver Ca from their synth-forward hit song “Soundtrack for Your Backseat,” but songs like “Wet Dreams” and “Oh Honey” conjured acts like King Krule with reverb-heavy guitar that culminated in belting vocals.
Seyer entered the stage and opened his set with a rendition of “Zelda’s Lullaby” from the video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on an ocarina of his own, with additional backing from the full band. The audience was clearly familiar with Seyer’s discography and personality, given the number of people singing along to every song and bantering with him. In the middle of the set, Seyer teased new music to balance out the older repertoire, only to break out a tongue-in-cheek cover of Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me.”
Most of the audience may have been toddlers when Nickelback’s Silver Side Up was released, but the audience immediately got the joke and belted out gravely supporting vocals. For another song, Seyer asked a fan to hold up a lyric sheet (as you do when playing a 6-year-old album in full) only to notice mid-song that he had given him the wrong sheet and instead repeated the first verse to laughs from the audience.
Now, Seyer’s tour continues up the East Coast, through Canada, and then back through the Midwest to finish with four California shows. It has been three years since the 2021 release of his last album, A Good Fool, so we hope he will be back in New York soon with new music. Seyer has shown the world that he is a talent both as a musician and lyricist, so we are excited to see where his career goes.
Michael Seyer – Elsewhere Zone One, Brooklyn – April 14, 2024
Setlist: Zelda’s Lullaby, Bad Bonez, Ring Around the Rosie, Show Me How You Feel, I Feel Best When I’m Alone, Weekend at Santa Cruz, Kill All Your Darlings, Untitled Bonez, Waiting for You, Lucky Love, Father, An Awful Lonely Summer, Motions, Sonata for a Bad Ghost
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