Book NOT Brooke and Friends Dance the Night Away

On an unpredictable Friday night built around dancing and spectacle, an eclectic crowd gathered in celebration of book NOT brooke and her debut LP Dancer First at The Blue Room at Third Man Records. The party featured a stacked lineup of Nashville favorites and project mastermind Brooke Vespoli’s closest friends, including bedroom producer Iven and indie-pop standout Henry J. Star, with DJs Spuddy and Sarah Goldstein keeping the energy up between sets. With antics ranging from creepy masks to a full-blown human pyramid, the evening delivered exactly the kind of delightfully strange chaos that is to be expected from book and her crew.

Nashville DIY recording wiz Iven nonchalantly pressed a button triggering a blaring synth note that snapped the crowd to attention before the sound slowly morphed into a pulsing beat. He careened effortlessly between synth-soaked dance pieces and slow, almost unsettling ballads. “This song’s not really for moving your tushy,” Iven explained. “But you can make do.” He explored the stage, wearing a wireless headset mic that introduced a bit of disorder by falling off, and he kept us on our toes as he hopped on one foot for a bit while mashing buttons on his controller. 

Following his set, Iven made his way down the stage steps and melted into the crowd for the dance party to come. Nashville DJ Sarah Goldstein filled the silence with a variety of bops from her station in the back corner of the packed room. A seamless transition from Blood Orange into Björk primed the crowd for electro-indie ace Henry J. Star. 

Star kicked off his set with a mix of new and unreleased songs, occasionally indulging the urge to fill a lull with a sample from his soundboard, filling the air with booming Soulja Boy one-liners and 2hollis riffs. Star finished off with “classics” from his October release The Soft Apocalypse, including the crashing emo-tinged “Ember.” 

“When book gets on the stage y’all better fucking dance,” Star warned before departing. “God bless, if you don’t dance I will harm you.”

Spuddy handled the next interlude, spinning Pink Pantheress into Daft Punk and paying homage to book with a track from her pop idol Kesha. Book’s bandmates were the first to approach the mostly empty stage, each sporting disguises with an eerie vintage look. Spuddy returned for his second appearance of the night, wearing a porcelain doll mask and setting up camp behind his keyboard, while his fellow synthesist Sam Toth approached in a painted latex mask that slightly resembled Jigsaw.

Book herself appeared next, embracing her signature kitschy style in a stage look that included a white lace bodysuit fitted with a crinoline and a mile-high hair bump. She took her place atop a whimsical ribbon-draped pedestal, launching immediately into thrashy, marionette-like dance moves as she opened with the distorted, industrial “Counting to 8.” Throughout the set, she shared center stage with Toth, who occasionally stepped away from her synth station to show off a few moves of her own. 

After finishing up “Ugly California” and its accompanying robotic choreography, book quickly departed the stage and returned in a more dance-ready costume. Over the lilting introduction to her ballad “The Plunge,” she unraveled a thread off of her pedestal and fished out a phalanx of vintage dolls, whom she serenaded. Carefully slinging her bass around her shoulders to many hoots of anticipation from the crowd (who may have recognized her from her other band Baby Wave), she dove into the disjointed groove of “I Do the Worm.” Leaning into the theme of Dancer First, book and Toth took turns literally doing the worm across the stage.

Her bandmates stepped aside, and for a few songs, book dialed the theatrics back. Accompanied by her fellow Baby Waver Gardner Gottsegen on guitar, she returned to her first instrument — cello — for an unreleased song. Musician and magician Sabby Swag (a longtime collaborator of book’s also known as Sabrina Niedbalski and formerly known as Zina) joined book next for an intentionally off-kilter performance of rushed whispers and restless screams before the band returned for the lullaby-like ballad “R U 8.”

Before breaking into the bass-driven introduction to “Hot Trend!,” book paused to thank the audience and plug her merch booth, whose offerings she enumerated as T-shirts, CDs and friendship. Toth once again departed her corner to join book in enchanting harmonies and coordinated dance moves over a punchy electronic track before the band launched into the fast-paced “Monkey Ball (B-A-N-A-N-A-S.)” Next, Book announced the album closer “Nobody Dances Anymore,” before she and the crowd effectively proved the title false.

Then the band departed the stage for a classic fake-out encore before Toth returned and blew a piercing whistle, rallying the crowd into a frenzy and eventually luring the rest of the crew back to their places. The simple but catchy electronic beat of “O.U. Oh Yeah” crackled from the speakers, and the green-screen-suited dancers featured in the song’s music video came out to dance with book. They ended the show with a chaotic bang, successfully stacking into a human pyramid with book perched on top, shimmying her pom poms. Amid the mayhem, the singer left the crowd with one final message before departing: “Thank you for being here tonight. And thank you all for being dancers.”

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