If the opening night is a guide, listeners at a Steve Lacy show this autumn hear the new record first. On the opening night of his tour in Minneapolis on 27 September, he played every song from his new album, Oh yeah?, in order, starting with the title track, before he turned to his older songs.
The Oh yeah? Tour is Steve Lacy’s first headline run since 2022, a 27-city trip across the US and Canada that reaches Radio City Music Hall in New York on Saturday 10 October and ends in Vancouver on 30 November. Here is what the show sounds like, what is on the record, and where it goes next.
The Album First, in Order
Lacy split the Minneapolis show into two parts, according to The Current. The first part was Oh yeah? played front to back. He told the crowd that it felt right to play the album in order, because he had spent a lot of time on the sequence and wanted to play it the way he made it.
That means listeners get the songs in the shape he intended. The Current describes lo-fi, funky drums on the title track, the pop hook of “the feeling”, the easygoing pop-rock of “doom” and the soft bedroom R&B of “is it cool?”, which features SZA on the record.
The guest voices are part of the show too. “pure colour”, the song with Erykah Badu, came with psychedelic, soul-filled keyboards, and “lovesexdrugbomb” used recorded vocals from Cecile Believe over swooning guitars, the review notes. “nice shoes / in your world”, built around an electronic lead-up and a bass drop, brought the highest energy of the night.
Lacy’s band is a four-piece behind him: guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. The Current’s reviewer found that they sounded close to flawless, even when the stage fog swallowed them.
Then the Songs Fans Came For
The second half of the night went back through his catalogue. Glide Magazine reports that he reached back to his 2017 EP, Steve Lacy’s Demo, for “Dark Red”, “Ryd” and “Some”.
Six songs came from Gemini Rights, his 2022 album, including its runaway successes “Bad Habit” and “Static”, along with “Helmet”. He also played “Hate CD” and the ballad “Only If” from his debut album, Apollo XXI.
The whole show ran to about two and a half hours at the Armory, a venue Glide puts at 8,400 capacity. Near the end of the main set came a jam of more than five minutes, with Lacy on his knees playing guitar. After the main set ended, the night closed with two songs from Oh yeah? played a second time, The Current reports.
A Smiths Song, Tried Out on Opening Night
The biggest surprise of the first night was a cover. Lacy played The Smiths’ “This Night Has Opened My Eyes”, strumming it on guitar partway through the set, according to Power 98.
The song has an unusual history. The Smiths recorded it for a radio session in 1983, and it never appeared on one of their studio albums. Fans found it instead on the compilations Hatful of Hollow and Louder Than Bombs.
Lacy told the crowd it had been one of his favourite songs since high school, and warned them that his version might not go well, Power 98 reports, citing Stereogum. The Current treated it as a trial: whether the cover stays in the set depends on how well audiences know it, and on night one the results were inconclusive.
A First Night With Rough Edges
Opening nights are where tours learn, and Lacy said so on stage. He admitted he had been nervous earlier in the day, The Current reports, and he talked openly about the kinks the crew still had to work out.
There were a few. A backing track started too early while he was teaching the crowd a harmony, and a video screen behind him was still blank when he checked on it near the end of the set. Many in the audience watched through their phones for long stretches, which the reviewer noted made Lacy hard to see from the floor.
The length was also up for debate. Near the end, Lacy asked the crowd whether he should keep the show this long. The Current’s view was that the generosity was welcome but pushed the limit, and that with 26 shows left there was plenty of time to tighten it. By the time the tour reaches New York, some of those details may already have changed.
The Record Behind the Tour
Oh yeah? came out on 17 July through RCA Records. It is Lacy’s third album and his first in four years, following Gemini Rights. He produced the ten songs himself, according to CelebrityAccess.
The record features SZA, Erykah Badu and Cecile Believe, and Consequence lists further contributions from Tyler, the Creator, Fousheé and Porches. Consequence named it one of the best albums of July. Glide hears a psychedelic shift on the record, with a neo-soul edge to his songwriting and more room for his guitar.
The release had company. Oh yeah? arrived on the same day as new albums from two of his fellow members of The Internet, Syd’s Beard and Chris Crispy’s Behind The Shades, Rated R&B noted. The album also came with carefully planned visuals, including the music video for “doom”, which CelebrityAccess says ties in closely with the record’s themes.
The title track found a second wind in August. It jumped 34 places to a new peak of number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, helped by its placement in the end credits of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Rated R&B reported.
Radio City, Red Rocks and the Hollywood Bowl
After Minneapolis, the tour moved through Chicago and Sterling Heights, Michigan, and plays Toronto on 5 October and Laval, Quebec, on 6 October. New York’s Radio City Music Hall follows on Saturday 10 October, then Boston on 13 October, Camden, New Jersey, on 15 October and Washington, DC, on 18 October.
The run then heads south through Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Raleigh, Miami, Tampa and Atlanta, and on to Nashville, Irving, Austin and Houston in early November. The western dates include Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado on 11 November and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on 21 November, before San Francisco, Seattle and the final show in Vancouver on 30 November.
The tour is promoted by Live Nation and is Lacy’s first run of headline shows since his sold-out Give You the World Tour in 2022. Tickets went on sale on 14 August through his official site.
Why the Order Matters
At 28, Lacy has two songs in Spotify’s Billions Club and two Grammy Awards, CelebrityAccess notes. He released his first EP almost ten years ago, so there is a deep catalogue to draw on. Plenty of artists at that level would open with the hits. Leading with a full album, in sequence, asks listeners to take the new record on its own terms before they get the songs they already know.
“Playing a new album straight through before a single old favourite is a vote of confidence in the record, and it gives listeners the clearest possible introduction to what Steve Lacy wants to be now,” said the GetMusic.News curator team.
For another artist who built a whole night around a single body of work, read how Big Thief played a whole unreleased triple album at the Ryman. Steve Lacy’s Oh yeah? Tour reaches Radio City Music Hall on Saturday 10 October.
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