Cosmic winks and calm vibes: Juliet Ivy and Deb Never at the Drake Underground

To experience a cosmic wink is to trust that the universe has quietly guided you exactly where you need to be. For the crowd packed into the basement of the Drake Underground on 26 August, that feeling was real.

They were there for the opener

Looking at the fans already pressed against the front of the stage before the show even started, it was clear that a large part of the room had been led there just for Juliet Ivy. She is twenty-five, from New York, and this was her Toronto debut.

She plays a Daisy Rock butterfly guitar, her voice contrasting beautifully with the heavy sonic foundation built by Georell Magno on drums and Merit Gentile on guitar. Washed in the room's own magenta and purple, the space felt close and personal.

Her performance was an exercise in duality, cheerful and bold, which showed in every part of her set, from her unique outfit (styled by Ang Kiriakos) to the way she mixed playful jokes with deep, honest lyrics.

The song where the phones went down

"4 foot 2" is a song about mental health, written from the point of view of her own inner child, and the mood in the room shifted when it arrived.

Then she played "Pretty4U", an unreleased track about the exhausting reality of the music industry. In a dark basement usually illuminated by the glowing rectangles of smartphones, something special happened: very few people were recording.

The crowd mostly just stood there in the purple light, taking in the line "it's hard being pretty for you". They chose to live in the moment together rather than film it.

Calm vibes, and then not

That shared feeling set the stage for Deb Never's first headline show in the city, on a North American run behind "Moviestarr", the single she released after her debut album ARCADE landed in May.

She read the room immediately and named it: "calm vibes." But a live show always breathes and grows. As the night went on she slowly turned up the heat, transforming that relaxed sway into a high-energy release. By the end of the set the whole room was shouting for one more song, a brief, desperate delay against the reality of having to go back out into the world.

After

Long after the music stopped, the crowd stayed.

Fans waited in the merch line to meet Juliet and Deb, who had nearly missed their flight to be there at all. Both artists took the time to talk and take pictures with every person in the queue.

In those quiet moments at the back of the room you could see what the night had actually been: people finding a brief, unbreakable joy together, and trusting that for tonight they were exactly where they were supposed to be.

Words and photographs: Zach Aureliano, in Toronto.