'I can’t explain how local I am': Eliza McLamb plays hometown show with new album, new perspective

Indie singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb’s childhood therapist was in the audience for her headlining show in the Cat’s Cradle Main Room on Saturday night. 

For McLamb, as she told the crowd, that spoke for itself.

There she was, performing a set of her deeply personal, introspective and nostalgic songs in the same venue where she saw The 1975 when she was 13 and down the street from the mall where she worked in high school, in her hometown.

“I can’t explain how local I am,” she said near the beginning of her set. 

Saturday’s show was the sixth stop on The Anything You Want Tour, which kicked off at the beginning of March, almost two months since the release of her debut album “Going Through It.” 

The album’s songs range from pop-rock kitschy angst in “Modern Woman” to childhood unpacking set to simple and poignant synth in “16.”

But for members of the audience on Saturday, like Becky Gilland, a senior at Florida State University who traveled with her friends to be in the front row, McLamb's emotional vulnerability was a strong through line.

“It has been really special to see the way that people individually are connected with [the album],” McLamb said in an interview before the tour. “And that's obviously really nice for me as an artist to work on something for so long and then see people really respond positively to it.”

Gilland started listening to McLamb during the pandemic, when she released her first EP, “Memos,” in 2020.

“Lena Grove,” — a song from "Memos" which McLamb played near the end of the night — was a balm for Gilland when she struggled with a breakup and rocky relationships with friends. Now, she associates specific memories throughout the past four years with McLamb’s discography. Coming to the show with her friends, she said, is a nice way to end her college years. 

“I feel like it marks how her music helped me grow through the period of college,” she said. “Which is what I feel like she writes about: young womanhood.”

During “Salt Circle” — in which McLamb details a spiritual connection with her best friend — a few young women in the audience held each other through tears as they sang along.

“She’s always been a really empathetic person,” her father and a Chapel Hill resident, Rodney McLamb, said. “And I feel like there’s lots of young women and girls who felt seen and understood by someone in the public for maybe one of the rare times in their lives.”

When McLamb started to ask the audience if they had ever felt the same way she did about — she was cut off before she could finish her thought.

“We do!” someone yelled from the back. 

Rodney McLamb remembers his daughter writing songs as early as 8 years old and said she just had a knack for it. Making music is something that has always made sense to her — she said that her Voice Memos and Notes apps on her phone are clearing 10,000 entries.

Aside from music, McLamb has co-hosted the cultural commentary podcast "Binchtopia" with Julia Hava since 2020. The girls describe themselves as Plato and Aristotle if they had internet addictions and knew what "gaslighting" was. In free flowing conversations, they explore topics ranging from conservative conspiracy theories to the unsung heroes of rock and roll and the “ugly boyfriend apocalypse." The podcast had also been recognized by The New York Times for feminist content creation. 

In her Substack account, “words from eliza,” she weaves a similar brand of cultural commentary with personal introspections about relationships, nostalgia or body image. 

“Ultimately, I'm just a very curious person,” she said. “I'm curious about things intellectually and culturally, but also about myself and my emotions and how other people are dealing with things in the world. So, to me, it makes sense to have multiple avenues to explore that.”

McLamb now lives in Los Angeles, but, she said spending time in major cities like L.A. and New York City made her identify with North Carolina more, even if — as she wrote on X after the show — the worst, most traumatic years of her life were lived in Carrboro. 

Through it all, she worked hard in high school to combine her junior and senior years. On any given weekday, she could be found doing her homework at Gray Squirrel Coffee Company from 5 a.m. until the school day started. She graduated early and headed to The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

“I definitely, as with anybody, have gone through a complicated relationship with my hometown,” she said. “But I think I've processed a lot, and it has allowed me to be really stoked about coming back to North Carolina.”

At Saturday’s show, she donned cowgirl boots. They're a symbol of her Southern roots, she told the audience, after performing a spontaneous cover of pop-country song “Beer With My Buddies” by HIXTAPE during her encore with the night’s opener, indie-pop group Mini Trees. 

During a visit to Carrboro over the holidays — with a familiar sense of hometown boredom, she said — McLamb and her boyfriend decided to go to a show in the Cat’s Cradle Back Room for a band neither of them had ever heard of. 

She said she left remembering Carrboro as a place that really respects and appreciates art. There were other people there who seemed as if they did not know the band and just wanted to experience the music. 

Her dad said he could not imagine how she felt while standing on stage Saturday, with all of her experiences since leaving — releasing music, dropping out of college, living in L.A. or creating the podcast — under her belt, with a different perspective on the past. 

And, on McLamb's Instagram story on Saturday night, she wrote, "Holy fuck Carrboro, this was the best night of my life. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. N.C. forever and ever and ever and ever."

@emimaerz

@dthlifestyle | lifestyle@dailytarheel.com

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