Sofi Tukker brought a joyful jolt of adrenaline to the Santa Barbara Bowl in last week’s 2024 season-ending show. On tour for their newest album BREAD — as in “Be Really Energetic And Dance” — the amped up and fabulously bedazzled crowd did just that. The Grammy nominated duo of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern (hence the band name Sofi Tukker) came in hot, with flashing red lights all the way to the tippy-top of the stage and four adorably bouncy go-go dancers. Friends since they met at Brown University in the early 2010s, the duo embraced a fun-filled, dynamic, electro-pop vibe world music vibe right from the get-go. Whether you imbibe or not, you can’t help but feel a little bit high when you’re in the orbit of these two.
They opened their set with the album’s namesake song “Bread” and lots of carb-loading visuals on a video screen behind them. The artists have said they view the doughy food as a kind of physical embodiment of energy; the carbohydrates keep them moving. And clearly, their music does the same for everybody that hears it.
A collage of Brazilian-inspired bossa nova, house music, and jungle pop, their dynamic, multilingual set included loads of upbeat tunes whose names telegraph their meanings pretty well: “Best Friend,” “Hey Homie,” “Swing,” “Batshit,” and “White Lotus.”
The quite frankly hilarious “Throw Some Ass,” from their most recent album, was followed by Tukker’s equally giggly comment: “After we look at everybody’s ass, we like to invite some people on stage.” And he did, as he added, “We play this song so we can identify if there’s any Brazilians in the house.” There’s definitely some samba, baile, and bossa nova built into the DNA of Sofi Tukker, but while the music has a decidedly Brazilian vibe, Tukker’s American and Sofi was born in Germany. She studied Portuguese in college, and her affection for Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language inspired a move to Brazil afterwards, to further learn the language and collaborate with local poets and artists. This resulted in songs like “Emergency,” a jungle-pop tune that’s sung mostly in Portuguese. Accompanied by a cheeky game of “Sofi Says” à la “Simon Says,” this was even clearer evidence that Sofi Tukker had the enraptured crowd firmly in the palm of their hands.
Toward the end of the night, she chanted “I see a lot of purple out there,” before launching into “Purple Hat,” with the crowd singing along to the infectiously silly lyrics — “Purple hat, cheetah print / Dancing on the people, rolled up at the after joint / Dancing dancing on the people / People dancing on the people, I got people on the people / People dancing on the people” — as the go-go crew did some very cool seemingly capoeira inspired moves.
Absurdly silly, sure. But oh so welcome and needed after a very stressful week (month, decade … however long this election cycle was).
As they ended the night with the first song they ever wrote together, “Drinkee” — a somewhat nonsensical song/chant featuring lyrics sung in Portuguese from a poem by Brazilian poet Chacal — I recalled reading an early interview with the band about the song’s 2015 debut on their self-titled EP. Asked about this particular song, Sofi told Interview Magazine, “It doesn’t matter whether or not you can understand Portuguese. The point of ‘Drinkee’ isn’t the meaning; the point is the nonsense.” And sometimes the nonsense is just what you need to get out of your head and up on your feet and just be really energetic and dance!
