Asher Joseph photo
The TV Girl All-Star Traveling Band.
A line snaked around Toad’s Place into the courtyard off of York Street on Monday evening as “Lonely Girls” and “boys who act their age” filed into the venue, headlined by TV Girl, a California-based indie pop band that took the internet by storm this year with a series of viral hits.
Fresh off the European leg of their tour in support of the group’s latest album, Grapes Upon The Vine, the TV Girl Traveling All-Star Band has taken the show on the road this fall and is making its way through the United States.
The band’s 14th stop on the tour, at Toad’s on Monday, offered perhaps greater intimacy than one would get at other regional venues, such as Terminal 5 in New York City. After tickets were snatched up within minutes in May, the sold-out Toad’s pulsed with vivid strobe lights and anticipation, welcoming a slightly younger teenage crowd than the venue and nightclub’s usual college-aged patrons. Clad in crop tops, jeans, and everything in between, the audience hummed with an unusually audible chatter as attendees shifted and sidestepped to unite friends despite staggered arrivals.
Minutes after 8 p.m., Pearl & the Oysters, the opening act, strolled onto the stage with an alluring swagger that was met with roaring applause.
The brainchild of a Parisian high-school friendship that now operates out of Los Angeles, Pearl & the Oysters played music that traverses the world’s rolling terrain, wading through swampy beats and oceanic melodies and orbiting out-of-this-world rhythms.
Armed with a collection of curious instruments, lead vocalist and founding member Juliette Pearl Davis held the audience’s hand in hers and used the other to play a flexatone, a flute, and several other whimsical sounds through the band’s six-song set.
Pearl & The Oysters.
The crowd quickly learned the lyrics to “Fireflies,” the band’s latest release, and danced into bossa-nova-esque pop oblivion during “Pacific Ave,” a summery moment of relief from New England’s looming cold season.
“This one goes out to Frank Pepe,” said drummer and Davis’ founding partner, Joachim Polack, of “Pacific Ave.” “I knew that one would land!” he responded to a chorus of cheering.
Toad’s continued to buzz as Pearl & The Oysters packed up their instruments, swaying along to a selection of music reminiscent of a teenager’s fall Spotify rotation. Screams swelled each time the silence between the end of one song and the beginning of another lasted a beat too long. “That was a LOL moment,” said West Haven High School senior Maz Khadi, doing the signature Gen‑Z head scratch popularized by platforms like TikTok, which have been instrumental to the success of the night’s headliner.
Without much fanfare, guitarist Zoe Zeeman plucked out the opening chords of “I’ll Be Faithful,” the first track on Grapes Upon the Vine, into the darkened venue, illuminated only by three red and orange light box displays resembling stained glass window panes in a church.
The stage jolted alive, bathing the six figures scattered across the stage in bright crimson hues.
TV Girl performs "I'll Be Faithful."
Contrary to the name’s connotations, TV Girl is actually a thirty-five-year-old man named Brad Petering. The songwriter founded the band in 2010, emerging as a pioneer of the hypnotic bedroom pop scene alongside pianist Wyatt Harmon and drummer Jack Wyman.
The audience was quick to join in with Petering, the lead vocalist, who was decked out in a dark sports jacket with matching shades. “I’ll be faithful, I’ll be faithful, I’ll be faithful,” they chanted, entranced by the energy the band exuded.
“I’ll Be Faithful” quickly melted into “Birds Dont Sing,” the second track on the band’s official debut album, French Exit. Paying homage to the red-washed vignette album cover, the stage and its light boxes continued to pulse with a rosy fervor. Petering pranced across the stage, cocking his head along to the beat of the sea of bobbing heads singing in unison: “Birds don’t sing, they just fall from the sky.”
The song, which samples “Seven Minutes in Heaven” by the Poni-Tails, created a peppy swank that thrummed throughout the venue until the song’s very last chord. “It don’t mean a … thing!” chimed Petering, delaying the song’s closing lyric to jokingly outlast the audience’s final note.
Petering greeted the crowd, urging them to “take care of one another. And, if I’m being perfectly honest, I can’t stand to look out at your sad, lonely faces any longer, so, for the love of God, if you see someone who looks lonely, give them a little kiss on the cheek or something.”
Screams ensued as fan-favorite “Not Allowed” then rang out from the overhead speakers, one of TV Girl’s most notable songs. Similar to the lighting concept for “Birds Dont Sing,” the stained glass light boxes glowed a familiar blue and pink associated with the song’s album, Who Really Cares, which distinguish two intertwined lovers on the cover.
Phones jumped back and forth as the crowd rocked along to the song’s remixed introduction, warbling the commanding voice that cues the beat drop. This frenetic movement continued into the bridge: a repetition of the words “All by yourself, sittin’ alone, I hope we’re still friends, yeah, I hope you don’t mind.”
Fans sway in unison to "Not Allowed."
After winning over the crowd with TV Girl’s more popular hits, Petering addressed the elephant in the room. “We know you didn’t like Grapes Upon the Vine,” he said, eliciting words of reassurance from the audience. “I saw the sales figures, you don’t have to lie. But when we were making this album, I was thinking, ‘Who listens to TV Girl anyway?’”
“Me!” replied several fans.
“That’s right, a bunch of depressed, repressed, yet also somehow horny and depraved, hedonistic, technology-addled, socially awkward, morally bankrupt, freaky little teenagers,” Petering joked back before joining the band in a rendition of “The Night Time” off of the new album.
If fans had not already been captivated by Petering’s accompanying singers, Keira Smith and MANIYA’s talent was sure to enrapture the stragglers during “The Night Time.” Embellished with agile riffs and peppy choreography, the duo’s soaring vocals went “up to Heaven to meet my Lord” as they sang later during Grapes Upon The Vine’s “Big Black Void,” embracing the religious motifs of the concert.
Smith (left) and MANIYA (right) impressed the audience with their soaring vocals.
Near the concert’s midpoint, Petering hushed the crowd and whipped out a can of Diet Mountain Dew Code Red. “Unfortunately,” he explained, “Grapes Upon the Vine sold so poorly that we needed a corporate sponsor. So, I’m here today to tell you about a drink as bold as the music you’re about to hear, for vocalists like us.”
Petering continued with a series of quips about the drink, each one tickling the audience. “Hashtag Code Red concerts,” he concluded.
Still reeling from Petering’s humorous sales pitch, the crowd maintained its enthusiasm as Harmon began to tap out the beat of Who Really Cares’ “Safeword” on a triangle, headbanging and bouncing along with the audience to the dainty rhythm.
Harmon (right) plays the triangle.
As “Safeword” wound down, Harmon produced a comically larger triangle on which he cued in the band to “Blue Hair,” the song off of the album Death of a Party Girl that catapulted TV Girl to TikTok stardom this past summer. The sea of dyed hair flounced as fans chimed in with every word, reciting the lyrics that introduced the band to a new demographic.
As the concert ebbed into the later hours of the night, Petering revealed several more antics he had up his sleeve, from pausing to eat a banana between songs to playing a short riff on the trumpet. “That was hot,” a fan said of Petering’s trumpet skills. “Thank you,” he replied.
After a night of relentless applause and cheering, Petering took a moment to express his gratitude to TV Girl’s loyal fans. “Most singers will say ‘Thank you, New Haven! You’ve been the best audience,’” he mocked, “but I want to take it a step further. I want to thank you all individually.”
Petering proceeded to call on raised hands, thanking Molly, Tyler, John, and Grace, before calling it quits and leading the band offstage.
To no one’s surprise, TV Girl soon returned for an encore that was sure to satisfy its fans’ craving for the ultimate crowd pleaser. “Now, the one you’ve been waiting for,” Petering grinned.
The stage fractured into a mosaic of crimson phone screens — resembling a window display of TVs — as fans craned to capture “Lovers Rock,” the band’s most popular song across all streaming platforms. The audience mustered up a round of applause louder than it had achieved all night, sending off the band with a bang.
A mosaic of phone cameras capturing "Lovers Rock."
Fans then raced to the merchandise stand to pick up T‑shirts and, at Petering’s request, vinyl copies of Grapes Upon The Vine. A select three, however, were content with a free vinyl copy of the album, the advertised can of Diet Mountain Dew Code Red, and Petering’s banana peel, all of which he tossed into the crowd as parting gifts.
Around 10:45 p.m., the “Lonely Girls,” no longer lonely, and the “boys who act their age,” feeling fulfilled after hearing the iconic “Blue Hair” lyric sung live, poured out onto York Street. TV Girl’s discography reverberated in every eardrum, the quietude of New Haven now ear-splitting after three hours of auditory catharsis.
A fan captures her favorite TV Girl song.