Concert Review: Steve Lacy at Moody Amphitheater
Undaunted by rain and technical difficulties, the genre-bending powerhouse gave a sophisticated performance full of newer tracks and beloved hits.
Written by Valeria Mota
Photos by Makenna Morgan
After performing the entirety of his latest album, Oh yeah?, to a tightly packed Austin crowd, singer-songwriter Steve Lacy boldly claimed that Oh yeah? is a classic, prompting enthusiastic whooping from the crowd. “But what do I know?” Though the statement would have come off as arrogant from any other artist, Lacy’s effortless performance at the Moody Amphitheater proved the sentiment to be true, and not just for Oh yeah?, but for the rest of his extensive catalog as well.
While Lacy ultimately demonstrated his music’s timelessness, it took a bit to actually start. The show was originally scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m., like the other shows on his ‘Oh yeah?’ tour, but was later moved to an 8:00 p.m. start time, half an hour earlier, with no explanation from the artist or the venue. As fans panicked to arrive on time or to cinch last-minute tickets as the Austin sky threatened rain, the worry was ultimately for nothing — the show did start at the originally promised time of 8:30 p.m. The arbitrary time shift created a logistical fiasco for the venue, but as soon as Lacy and his band started singing the viral title track for Oh yeah?, any annoyance left in the crowd quickly evaporated.
After kicking off the night with the infinitely catchy title track “oh yeah?”, Lacy proceeded to sing the entirety of his 2026 album from front to back, something he explained he had not done since his ‘Apollo XXI’ tour in 2019 and would probably not do again. Performing the entirety of the 39-minute album is ultimately what proved Lacy’s “classic” claim, as the immediate transition between mellow tracks like “is it cool?” and “pure colour” to angstier tunes like “lovesexdrugbomb” and “nice shoes/in your world” perfectly encapsulated the inherent highs and lows of romantic relationships. Even the album’s raunchier lyrics — like “doom”’s “I’m a big baby suckin’ on big titties” and “show you me”’s “Hard to smile ‘cause I had the coochie stuck in my teeth” — felt intimately sincere with Lacy’s laid-back but earnest delivery, punctuated by his signature raw falsettos. Lacy’s talent doesn’t stop at his songwriting though, as he and his backing band proved their instrumental abilities with an almost 20-minute version of “doom,” complete with drummer Stanley Randolph’s crisp fills and deep bass lines from Joe Cleveland.
The singer struggled to find something clever to say before starting the second section of the show and settled on an old joke about his sexuality, then launched into 2019’s “Only If.” “My sexuality is pretty ambiguous, you know? But people say, ‘Is he a homosexual, bisexual, pansexual?’” he said. “And my answer is, ‘I’m just sexual!’” The joke got the crowd riled up as the artist took a quick trip through his catalog with snippets of songs like “C U Girl,” “Sunshine,” “Basement Jack,” and “Cody Freestyle.” The comment on his sexuality might have been made just for laughs, but it actually set the mood for the second part of the show, as it heightened the sexual undertones beneath the romantic yearning of his now-classic songs.
Next, Lacy asked the crowd for song suggestions, telling them to write their requests on their phones and hold them up. What started as a creative way to directly connect with the Austin audience slowly made the crowd restless, as the artist only plucked his guitar and sang quick lines from otherwise musically rich tracks like “Hate CD,” “That’s No Fun,” and a cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “PRIDE,” which Lacy helped produce. Even Lacy’s supporting band seemed to just wait around for Lacy to wrap up his stripped-down improvisation so they could get back to serious performing. When Lacy finally announced the end of the “song request section,” the stage lights punctuated the opening piano chords of the introspective “Static,” and fans were fully back on board with the performance. As Lacy continued to belt the upbeat “Helmet” and revisit demo tracks like “Some” and “Ryd,” it was clear that the singer thrived on the structure of a setlist instead of improvised song selections, leaving the crowd wondering if the “song request section” was simply a way to pander to the Moody Amphitheater audience.
Lacy continued with a graceful delivery of sonically diverse cuts like “Mercury” and “N Side,” which established his ease as a musician, singer, and crowd-controlling performer. As he serenaded the audience with the bouncy “Give You the World” under light drizzling, concertgoers were reminded of Lacy’s vocal and production abilities, and their enthusiastic singing during the closing smash hits “Bad Habit” and “Dark Red” further proved that Oh yeah? isn’t the only recording from Steve Lacy with earned classic status.
Yet the most memorable part of the night was undoubtedly the encore, when the artist played “the feeling” three more times. He encouraged the crowd to get crazier with each iteration, to which the audience happily obliged. Fans from the general admission lawn at the back of the amphitheater flooded the front section to record and belt the song’s confessional chorus, growing more confident with each repetition. Lacy subtly facilitated a uniquely unifying concertgoing experience as the front crowd grew tighter and the singing grew louder, and by the time the singer closed the show by repeating “Oh yeah?”, the audience seemed to become a single, singing entity. Even as Lacy wrapped up the show with an impressive falsetto run, the giddy atmosphere of the encore took a while to dissipate, leaving the audience with a one-of-a-kind feeling found only in live music events.
The night started with logistical difficulties and ended with soft rain, but that did not deter Steve Lacy from delivering an effortlessly cool set of alternative R&B. While improvised song selections don’t exactly play to his strengths, Lacy’s laid-back attitude throughout his Austin set let his songs speak for themselves, with the audience’s eager cheers proving his tracks’ staying power. The two-hour and 30-minute show not only cemented Oh yeah? and Lacy’s catalog as classics, but also showcased Steve Lacy as a modern classic himself.