The Sunday night air in Chicago had a bite to it that felt appropriate for the arrival of Skullcrusher. Helen Ballentine brought her project to the Old Town School of Folk Music for a performance that felt less like a concert and more like a collective exhaling of breath.
Maurer Hall is a listening room in the truest sense. It is a space designed for silence. You can hear the radiator hum and the subtle creak of a floorboard three rows back. For an artist like Ballentine, whose music thrives in the microscopic spaces between a note and the silence that follows, it was the ideal setting.
The Atmosphere
Ballentine took the stage with a quiet, unassuming focus. She was joined by June McDoom and h. pruz, two artists who share her affinity for the spectral and the soft. The stage was sparse. It perfectly mirrored the skeletal beauty of her latest record, And Your Song Is Like A Circle. There is a quality to her voice that feels like a secret being told in a crowded room. It is a hushed, confessional breath that forces three hundred people to stay absolutely still.
The Performance
The setlist leaned heavily into her newer material. These songs mark a shift away from the domestic intimacy of her earlier EPs toward something more expansive and vaporized.
The opening piano notes of "March" felt like a cold morning in the Hudson Valley. It set a tone of surrender that carried through the entire evening. When she moved into "Maelstrom," the room shifted. The looping harmonies and echoing drumbeats created a sense of beautiful claustrophobia. It felt like being caught in a recurring dream that you aren't quite ready to wake up from.
"Red Car" was a particularly resonant moment for those of us who live in the city. Her lyrics about parking lots forming constellations hit home in a place where we spend so much of our lives navigating the concrete grid. The night eventually closed with "The Emptying." While the track was originally inspired by the jarring finale of a David Lynch film, the live rendition felt surprisingly grounded. It was a recognition of grief delivered with a lightness that felt like a quiet way of moving forward.
The Takeaway
Skullcrusher is an artist who values the imprint of an experience over the noise of a hook. Leaving Maurer Hall, the city streets felt a little softer and the yellow glow of the streetlights seemed a bit more intentional. It was a contemplative start to the week that stayed with me long after the final note faded.
The Essential Excerpt: Skullcrusher’s set at Maurer Hall was a masterclass in devastatingly soft intensity. Moving through the spectral folk of her new album, Helen Ballentine turned the intimate theater into a shared headspace. The performance culminated in the track "The Emptying," which somehow made the burden of heavy themes feel as light as a whisper.