The Courage to Try: Tash Sultana Turns Manifestation Into a Two-Hour Masterclass at MGM Music Hall
Saturday night at MGM Music Hall was a milestone as much as it was a great concert. Tash Sultana remarked from the stage that this was the biggest venue they'd ever played in Boston. The room, filled with a crowd that had clearly been waiting for exactly this, felt the weight of that moment. It was equal parts long-time fans and newcomers, but both got a concert that went beyond expectations.
Daisy the Great opened the evening with a stripped-down set, just two women and their guitars. What they lacked in production they made up for in harmonies, which were genuinely excellent throughout. A cover of “Tom's Diner" was a particular highlight, the familiar melody reframed with unique harmonies in a way that kept a still-filling room's full attention. Their set was brief but well-matched to the night ahead.
Tash took the stage around 9:30 decked out in an oversized David Ortiz Red Sox jersey (something the Boston crowd always eats up) and proceeded to play for well over two hours across a set in three distinct acts. The first and third acts featured a full band. The middle stretched out the longest and was the most remarkable, just Tash alone, building songs entirely from scratch through live looping. If you've never seen how this works in person, it's difficult to fully convey. Watching a complete, layered piece of music emerge from a single person, one instrument and loop at a time, is genuinely impressive in a way that no recording can prepare you for.
After playing for a full hour straight to open the show, Tash sat down at the front of the stage to breathe and talk for a bit. They spoke candidly about parting ways with their old management team. “I have not fucking looked back for one second," they said, to considerable cheers. They also spent time on the subject of manifestation, in a way that felt like a motivational speech from someone who had clearly figured out how to achieve their dreams. “You have to reverse engineer your manifestation. Manifestation is the end goal, and to get there, you have to get off your ass. It doesn't just get delivered to you. You need the courage to try, and the courage to fail. Then it's the ultimate honor when you succeed."
When a handful of people filtered out after “Jungle" at the end of the solo set, Tash clocked it with a grin. “These people don't know what they're missing. This is where the best stuff happens." They weren't wrong. While the solo middle section featured “Milk & Honey," “Mystik," “Notion," and “Jungle," was the emotional and technical centerpiece of the night, some of the best songs came towards the end of the night.
The full band returned for the final stretch, closing the main set on “Coma" before an encore of “Blackbird" sent a packed MGM Music Hall home well past midnight.
More than two hours, one artist on plenty of instruments, the biggest Boston stage of their career, and a David Ortiz jersey. Tash Sultana had manifested something big.
