The Strumbellas @ World Café Live: A Night of Harmony & High Spirits
Review by Erin Hunter
Photos by Steve Cerf
“Your voices are the heart of this band” - Jimmy Chauveau, lead singer of The Strumbellas
The Strumbellas graced the stage of the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Thursday, April 4, 2024, while on tour for their new album Part Time Believer. The show opened with a performance by Nashville-based alternative/indie band Certainly So, whose harmonies and upbeat sound coexisted with breaks of extended jamming influenced by classic psychedelic rock.
Philadelphia was the first stop on the US leg of their tour, which shares the same title as the album (released February 9). For those who may not know, this is also the first album created with lead singer Jimmy Chauveau, who replaced founder and lead singer Simon Ward back in 2022. The concert lineup featured new hits like “Salvation” and ended with the acclaimed ballad “Spirits”.
Part Time Believer is about “the half-truths we believe and the whole truths we believe half the time. There are so many things we tell ourselves – about what we’re capable of, why we should keep going, and why we have so much to be grateful for,” according to the band “The songs are about getting knocked down and getting back up again, about how it feels to keep fighting when half your brain is telling you to stop.”
Chauveau is evidently grateful, as he repeatedly thanks the audience and his adopted musical family with words and cheeky smiles. The album message is further amplified when the band asks showgoers to write down their beliefs and the things that “get you through this s*** [called life],” Chauveau said. They were able to uniquely inspire an environment of openness, empathy, and hope– it not only reflects their lyrics but showed that they engage with the things they sing about.
Lyrically, their songs often address anxieties, feeling lost or feeling nothing at all, but also overcoming. During each song, drummer Jeremy Drury is like a general who marches the band into the chorus, which is deceptively simple but powerfully uplifting. The chorus is made even stronger when all band members rejoice to sing them as one, which makes me yearn to call them a family band. Isabel Ritchie (violin and vocals) rounds out the homeliness and back porch earnestness of their sound.
As I look around me and see smiles, cuddles, and showgoers with their hands raised as high as can be, I can’t help feeling that The Strumbellas are a safe haven to feel joyful. In the era of melancholic and angsty indie pop, they do the opposite and the people are grateful.
