In all my years of seeing shows, l may never quite have seen one as joyously confounding as Oliver Tree’s visit to Boston’s House of Blues. A menagerie of costume changes and props, not the least of which are a pair of guitars bigger than anyone on stage, keeps up a whirlwind pace as the LA artist takes a much larger stage the last time he was in town when he played the tiny, now-defunct Great Scott, which for all its charm couldn’t be more different to this massive triple-tiered space.
Oliver’s penchant for the bizarre is longstanding, including in his extensive resumé writing credits for sketch comedy which definitely have come to inform his onstage personas (of which there are many), as well as production nods that hint at why his songs all bristle with a certain practiced polish. Oliver emerges onto the stage dressed in a purple-toned windbreaker and huge jeans that billow out at the end, putting any other bell-bottom to shame. They’re like David Byrne’s big suit but made of denim. Tree runs across the stage, arms outstretched like an airplane, and heads right into the action with songs from his debut record Ugly is Beautiful. He’s ostensibly here to tour his newest disc, Cowboy Tears, but the night begins not with the twang of acoustic guitar, but instead sounding more like a rave or a rap show, with emcee Tree hopping up and down to huge synth swells.
After a handful of songs, he heads off to remove his outfit and returns to the stage in a getup that bears the distinct color splash of the Dixie cups of old. He keeps the ridiculous blonde wig that is deliberately doing a bad job concealing his actual hair though, and during a moment of intensity headbangs a pair of ski goggles clean off and then spins around on the floor during an instrumental break. There’s no denying it: Oliver Tree is pure chaos. He’s his own hype man. He’s unhinged and loving it.
More of his comedic chops come to the fore through the night between songs, allowing his shadow-shrouded pair of backing players to switch between instruments. At one point he teases the crowd with a supposed glimpse into his third album, but over the PA comes not new Oliver Tree but instead one of those classic player piano songs that soundtracked so many silent films. “I try not to fucking swear but I can’t help myself,” he cracks, and it’s true: he swears at a rate that makes one think that the prospect of him stopping would require a fundamental change in his biology. Soon he’s offstage again, but just as quickly back on wearing a bright glow-in-the-dark vest and a ski mask. He calls for the opening of a mosh pit, and the sold-out crowd is happy to oblige.
Tree has been enjoying viral success, and not for the first time, on the ever-more-ubiquitous TikTok platform, with his song “Life Goes On”. A b-side from his first record’s deluxe edition, it was transformed with unthinkable speed into his most recognizable track, which prompts a sea of waving hands from the audience when he plays it. About mid-set Tree decides to change up the motif, and as the set changes, he fills the House of Blues with, inexplicably, ‘Sandstorm’ by EDM artist Darude, a song that has long been a meme unto itself. But it’s a red herring, and for act two, Oliver reemerges in a full blue denim outfit – even his Stetson hat – and mounts a fake cow, not a horse, in the middle of the stage and begins to sing in front of a massive ranch backdrop, finally putting Cowboy Tears on full display.
But Oliver Tree is no Orville Peck, aside from the addition of some fringe, nor is he trying to be. There’s a good deal of acoustic guitar on the new record, but mostly Tree uses the proxy of the cowboy to underpin an album about loneliness, both by choice and not. And also as an excuse to ride a gigantic spinning cow statue while looking like a cross between Joe Exotic and a used car salesman. (The wig is still on, by the way.)
But for all the hyping of the crowd, the spectacle, and prop work, Tree’s lyrics and his anecdotes carry weight. He at different times recounts a near-death experience on a plane, and also the unexpected passing of a friend during the making of Cowboy Tears. About that latter tale, he encourages the crowd to never miss an opportunity to tell their friends and family they love them; “Maybe that’s weird to say to your friends, but don’t be scared, motherfuckers.”. Underneath his bravado and the general joy of his show, there’s the seriousness of a man who’s experienced loss and is old enough to know how precious moments can be in light of life’s fragility.
The rest of the night sees Oliver ride a tricycle in figure-eights around the stage, do a trick on a scooter with a stuffed horse’s head on its handlebars, and visit some more tracks from Ugly is Beautiful that strike a more Weezer-esque tone, proving that Tree can move into the world of rock as deftly as he speaks the language of rap, rave, and rodeo. Tree ends the evening with a reprise of ‘Alien Boy’, the audience joining him one final time in the song whose chorus, exhausted and cynical, comprises maybe the single-best piece of writing Tree has done to date. He speaks sincerely to the audience in his final words before leaving the stage: “No matter how ugly you feel – you are beautiful”. It’s a sentiment he’s clearly committed to, having spent his musical career looking through different lenses at people who are fundamentally outcasts. Then the house lights come on… and the Seinfeld theme plays over the speakers, because of course it does.
Review and Photos by Collin Heroux