My introduction to British singer-songwriter Billie Marten was seeing her back in 2016 as part of that year’s SXSW. During her performance that year, I was impressed by her talent as a singer and songwriter at only 16 years old. And while I enjoyed her performance that year, I will admit that I stopped paying close attention over her last few albums. But when I saw that Marten would be coming through Toronto to play a show in support of her recently released fourth album Drop Cherries, I was keen on seeing how she’s progressed as an artist – in the grand scheme of things, 2016 was not all that long ago, but long enough in the life of a young musician that a lot can change.
One thing that’s certainly changed since I last saw her perform is that Marten has built up a dedicated fanbase over the years, one with an especially strong contingent in Toronto. As Marten noted while thanking the audience (whom she referred to at one point as “sweet little pickles” – a great expression) for coming out, Toronto was the first show on her current tour to sell out and apparently the second largest listening area for streaming next to London. So it would seem that Toronto loves Billie Marten.
A similar expression of love for our city (and Canada in general) came from opener Olivia Kaplan. “I love Canada. So much,” she said, adding that she went to school for a bit in Canada and noting how many happy dogs and babies she’d seen out on the streets of Toronto earlier in the day.
She also commented on how nice it was to face such attentiveness from a crowd as an opener (“Wow, you’re all so silent.”), adding that every one of her shows with Billie Marten have been like this. The standout song from her set was “American Air,” a beautiful track inspired by a road trip taken from NYC to Montreal on the day that David Berman died.
Kaplan would later return to the stage as a member of Marten’s backing band. And while the band sounded great and added lot of texture to her songs (an even more impressive feat considering Marten had only just met them for the first time two weeks earlier), one of the more memorable moments of her set came midway through when the band took a break and she carried on solo for a few tunes. As I’ve already mentioned, Billie Marten seems to have built up a fairly dedicated fanbase in Toronto and they definitely showed their dedication at the outset of the solo mini-set. Starting out with a call for requests, Marten was bombarded with an onslaught of options as everyone shouted out their favourite songs at once.
“Absolute chaos. I’ve taken it all in,” she responded, adding, “We’ll see what happens.”
I couldn’t hear any of what was shouted out but I’ll assume that at least a few of the shouted requests made the cut. One which definitely made the cut was “Orange Tree,” a selection that surprised even Marten, who needed a little help remembering the words.
“How do you guys even … ?” she wondered. “That was, like, a really rare demo.”
And the answer, quite probably, is that it’s on the internet and there’s no longer even such a thing as a really rare demo these days. Still, rare or not, it sounded lovely and the song stood out as a highlight of her set, as did the moment later in the set when Marten asked for and received a bit of help from the crowd in the form of a mass chorus of backing vocals.
Perhaps my favourite moment of the night, however, came from the inadvertently perfect comic timing of a fan who cried out, “NOOOO!” right after Marten announced that she’d be playing her last song before then quickly adding, “And this is the encore. Because we can’t be bothered to walk downstairs and come back up again.”
Crisis averted. I’m sure the fans, and that fan in particular, appreciated getting another song or two from Ms. Marten.