Katie Gavin brought her intimate tour to Boston last month, offering a welcome, albeit crowded, respite for frozen fans who braved the winter cold. Over seven years since her last performance at Brighton Music Hall with her band MUNA, Gavin showcased her debut solo album What A Relief to an eager audience.

Attendees who had taken it upon themselves to queue early in the evening’s freezing temperatures were fortunate enough to catch the opening set by singer-songwriter Nana Adjoa. The sheer number of fans and the corresponding wait to get through the doors however meant that many missed out on the initial performance. Those late arrivals did not have to wait long to see Adjoa again as Katie Gavin’s sole accompaniment for the headline event. 

The stripped back acoustic set was a chance for Gavin to demonstrate her talent as a multi-instrumentalist, a skillset that often takes a back seat in her role as the front person of MUNA. She performed the entirety of What A Relief, a deeply personal collection of songs accumulated over the course of the last several years and kept on the back-burner as MUNA rose in prominence as a separate project. As Gavin showcased her album, the wall-to-wall audience alternated between singing along to every lyric and almost eerily reverent silence. 

The cozy stage dressing of candles and ceramics suitably reflected the bare intimacy and warmth of Gavin’s solo endeavor. As if to highlight the unusually direct connection, bold fans asked quirky questions between songs and received casual answers in impromptu mini Q&A sessions. The show was a short affair, given the limited number of tracks in Katie Gavin’s solo catalog so far, but any delighted fan could tell you that Gavin’s return to Brighton Music Hall was as good as it gets.

Check out the rest of Greg’s photos below.