LÉA THE LEOX with guitarist Graham Bhuyan.
When asked to describe how he felt about the set he played at Hamden’s Space Ballroom Saturday night, LÉA THE LEOX’s guitarist, Graham Bhuyan, smiled and said, “It kind of felt like hugging your favorite color.” An up-and-coming soul, pop, and R&B act out of LA, LÉA THE LEOX and Bhuyan wasted no time stealing hearts on Hamden soil. It’s safe to say whatever the color was, it hugged back hard.
On mic stands and instruments, synthetic sunflowers bloomed like otherworldly set design under the funky blue lights. Themes of vegetation sprawled past the edges of the stage and into the audience. Denim overalls dutifully held back sweaters exploding with daisies, pansies, and violets. Jackets in whimsical colors seemed to shout, “Spring is coming! I’ve seen it before, and I’ll see it again!”
And the pants, so many floral pants. After all, this was feature band Melt’s Plant the Garden tour. In this kind of environment, not even a simple T‑shirt is safe — it will have a silly little flower with a face on it. LÉA brought the scene to life as the opening act.
Bhuyan retrieving his instrument after the set, graciously accepting the accompanying burst of applause from the audience.
The outfits and stage dressing might have been for the feature, but LÉA and Bhuyan borrowed the setting with grace, playing to a full crowd of flowers and faces. The fact that music lovers showed up with plenty of time to enjoy the opening set was normal for locals and remarkable to LÉA THE LEOX’s manager, Sandra Dib. Accustomed to crowds in LA’s music scene, where there is “so much industry” that audience members often arrive only to see the feature, Dib noted pleasant surprise that the audience at the Space Ballroom came early, ready to fall in love with a new artist.
The crowd ambled. It wandered. It sunk into the soil of the evening. Even the disco ball glittering from the ceiling of the Space Ballroom seemed to rotate with an uncharacteristic slowness, as if it just remembered it didn’t have anywhere to go. The spring, its flowers, and the soft tunes of indie rock and soul were right there, ready to bloom.
LÉA THE LEOX flooded the room with smooth, buttery vocals and hard musings on life and heartbreak. After spending a whole song begging a crush to open their eyes to life-changing love, LÉA joked into the mic, “Then I opened my eyes and realized it was never going to work.” She paused to let the audience laugh before continuing, “We didn’t make sense. Sorry, bookie.”
At times, LÉA’s voice carried the hint of a scream or yodel, adding a folk desperation to the rolling waves of her melodies. Bhuyan leaned, fluid and heavy, into his thick neo-soul guitar riffs, encouraging the audience to do the same.
LÉA THE LEOX opening her set with "Topanga Blues," a song about the mountains.
The crowd scream-sang along to covers of aughts classics like Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” as LÉA and Bhuyan added runs and a smooth R&B motor to the familiar zillenial childhood landscapes.
As she moved into her latest single “IFY” (for “I Found You”), which dropped last week on her first day of tour, LÉA THE LEOX delivered a sensual groove that would go on to pulse through the rest of the set.
LÉA directed her easy charm and humor toward individual people as well as the audience as a whole. It soon became something the room shared together. In introducing Bhuyan, LÉA said, “Give it up for Graham; he’s the best band in the world.” After thinking out loud and tracing relationship issues back to her childhood, she quickly added, “Just kidding. My mom is in the house; love you, Mom,” nodding to some point in the crowd.
LÉA THE LEOX covers Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" and plays two originals.
Fun fact: The audience Saturday night was made up of mostly avoidant and disorganized attachment styles, which would not be at all apparent except that LÉA asked everyone to shout their style out. (It is, of course, possible that the anxiously attached were too fearful to speak up and that the securely attached were so secure they felt no need to heed LÉA’s request.) LÉA extended an offering to those who did shout, blessing the mic with a plea that extended beyond her: “Don’t want to run away, I don’t want to run anymore.”
Teaching the audience how to sing along.
At the merch table, upon learning it was new fan Rene Zelaya’s birthday, LÉA turned to Bhuyan and said, “I’m going to give him a keychain.” This piece of merch, like most other things on the table, was made by the band members themselves.
Spontaneous birthday gift for new fan Rene Zelaya: a keychain with a code for a mystery track.
All of the keychains were scannable, linking the user to either released or unreleased music (the exact track you got was a surprise). Next to these were sticks of incense, soaked by hand in LÉA’s own home. Was it passion, DIY ingenuity, or a need to keep on a strict budget that necessitated these personal touches? According to Dib, the answer was all of the above. She noted how expensive it is to put in an order for these things; instead, the artists found themselves awake, soaking incense at 5 a.m. the night before tour began.
There are things money can’t buy. There are things that become magical in cities that aren’t so “industry.” And when the music hits just right on the chunky heel of a singer-songwriter yearning, there are colors that hug back.
Incense hand-soaked by the band members themselves, available at LÉA THE LEOX’s merch table.
LÉA THE LEOX is planning an EP release for the early summer, with consistent drops until then. The artist is based in LA, but she is already working on her next tour. Fingers crossed she makes it back this way soon.