Arcata Theater Lounge 07/06/2026
she’s green // Narrow Head // Turnover
she’s green were the reason I stayed out late on a Monday night. Their performance was everything I imagined it would be – beatific, gentle, lush – cascades of fuzz crowned with sparkling cleans that wavered between delicate and overwhelming, breathy vocals tying it all together. They were a delight to watch on stage, each member very much in synch with the others, the group falling in and out of focus on stage in between flares of fog and washes of rising and falling light. The bass player was particularly engaging to watch, eschewing the classic eponymous stage posture of this style of music for a much more dynamic presence. she’s green has a new EP coming out on Friday and the songs they’ve shared from it so far are some of their best work yet.
Narrow Head felt like a bit of a tonal shift with the heft of their music and the accompanying pit that broke out in the crowd, but the throughline is there for those with ears to hear. They have the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, Hum in their DNA. Heavy, humbucker-powered, hypnotic, drop-tuned, devastating. There’s an aggression in their music that made their position as the middle set of the night perfect. I’m reminded of something my tai chi teacher said about the two quick movements snuck into the form – they’re there to make sure you’re awake. I appreciate a band that couples walls of distortion with slow tempos and clean vocals, particularly when they bring riffs to a genre known more for chord progressions and stacked layers of sound than for iconic guitar lines.
I admittedly wasn’t familiar with Turnover, the headliner, before hearing about this show. I listened to Peripheral Vision and their newest album Down on Earth in the weeks leading up to the show and really dug what I heard. I knew they were good, but was wholly unprepared for how incredible they would be live.
Quickly arpeggiated chords on guitars lightly laden with chorus, clever lyrics charged with pathos, an audience sprinkled with people dancing, people swaying, people jumping, people crying, people raising their hands skyward and singing along – all the classic hallmarks of a dream pop performance. Yet to call them “dream pop” feels incomplete, “emo” feels reductive. It’s not exactly snappy but “dreamy, vaguely emo indie pop” feels like it somewhat captures their sound accurately.
Maybe it was the rapturous attention of the crowd, maybe it was the reverence with which the singer spoke about Humboldt County and the place the redwoods hold in his heart, but something about the night’s performance felt particularly special. Very intimate. The singer ended each song with a warm hand raised to the audience. The gesture brought to mind my Muslim friends who touch their hands to their hearts to express gratitude, connection, humility, resonance, love. Turnover are playing in the bay area with Nothing this winter and I hope to head down to see them again (and see Nothing!), but I don’t know if any other performance will capture the magic of their first time performing in Humboldt.
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