With guitar solos and crashing cymbals, all-female indie rock band Inertia performed its first concert in the Northwestern Room of Norris University Center Saturday night.
The band’s setlist included a total of nine songs, with covers of famous rock and pop artists The Marías, The Cranberries, Deftones and Chappell Roan. The group also played two original songs to conclude its performance.
The band is composed of four students: McCormick freshman and bassist Cameron Crawford, SESP freshman and drummer Hailey Kim, Weinberg freshman and lead singer Maya Raman and Communication freshman and guitarist Kumi Long. The band formed in November and has played together ever since.
In the wake of Inertia’s first successful live performance, Raman said she felt the instantaneous payoff of the planning and preparation that went into the event.
“My favorite part was at the beginning of the show when the air was really tense,” Raman said. “Everyone was expecting us to start and we finally came in with the first song and everyone started cheering. It was just a really beautiful moment.”
For some audience members, this was the first indie rock concert they had seen at Northwestern.
“The performance was definitely something that this school has never seen before,” said Weinberg freshman Cisco Hernandez, a friend of Kim. “It’s the epitome of music and originality. The band members have such good chemistry, and you can tell that they’ve put a lot of practice into what they’ve performed tonight.”
The audience also included a group of students from Loyola University Chicago who took the CTA to Evanston for the live performance.
The students heard about the band from their friends at NU who invited them to attend the concert. As fans of the indie rock bands that Inertia covered, the Loyola students said they decided to join the crowd in Norris.
“I really loved it; their covers were really good, but they put their own spin on it,” Loyola freshman Mirsab Naeem said. “We don’t really have a music scene at our university from what I’ve seen, so I’d have to say that the one at Northwestern seems better.”
In between songs, some of the band members took the time to shout out specific members of the audience and express their gratitude for their friends’ support of the band’s activities.
Crawford gave a shout-out to her close friend McCormick freshman Adele Wilson, who worked on designs for the band’s marketing efforts.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all, so getting that shout-out was really meaningful,” Wilson said. “I feel like a proud parent because I heard them from the start as they’ve grown to be such a powerful band. I can’t wait to see what they do in the future.”
Email: JunseoLee2028@u.northwestern.edu
Related Stories:
— Local band Daundry epitomizes indie, punk music in easygoing show
— NU indie alternative rock band safety scissors sets sights high following successful first gigs
