Photos: Covet @ Delmar Hall | 04.15.23
California math rock trio Covet, fronted by guitar virtuoso Yvette Young, played to a packed Delmar Hall in Saint Louis, Missouri on April 15th, 2023. Was this former Guitar Center employee impressed with all the cool finger tapping? Read on to find out!
Covet, more specifically Covet guitarist and vocalist Yvette Young, have been on my radar for some time. I watched Yvette’s YouTube page from time to time during the early days of the pandemic and enjoyed the respite it provided from the general terribleness of the world. Yvette’s guitar playing is big on fretboard tapping, fancy chord formations, and a right hand style that is somewhere between the PIMA technique seen in classical guitar and good ol’ fashioned chicken pickin’. Here was someone that was incredibly good at a very specific, very technical style of guitar playing that could actually put some real melody and feeling into it. There was no oversized ego to be seen, but the sort of warmth a friend gives off when they proudly show off the houseplant they’ve been able to keep alive for more than 4 months.
I had been pretty excited to shoot this show. However, there had been tornado warnings for most of the evening, and I ended up missing openers scarypoolparty and altopalo while watching the weather. I arrived at Delmar Hall just minutes before Covet were set to perform. As I got my cameras ready, they walked on stage. Covet kicked off their set with the slightly heavy “Coronal” and followed it up with the endless summer bop “Firebird.” This was the first tour for new band members Brandon Dove and Jessica Burdeaux, and they looked to be having a quite a good time. It seemed like all the members were struggling not to smile too much. The crowd gladly reciprocated the energy.
Folks, the vibes were good.
After photographing the first 3 songs, I hung out near the side of the stage. Usually, I will hang around for a few songs after I’m done shooting, then head off so I can go home and edit. I found that I was enjoying myself so much that I decided to stick around a bit longer. For a band that is mostly instrumental, and while I can’t say that every single song they performed was something I would specifically call upbeat, there was a joyful energy coming off the stage that was hard to turn away from.
At one point, I made my way through the crowd, passing smiling guitar nerds and their dancing girlfriends, and checked out the merch booth near the back of the venue. Covet’s merch game is on point, for sure. There was one design that reminded me of a shirt my Aunt Kelly, who worked at a Toyota dealership, gave me as a child. I was very tempted to buy it, but I have too many band shirts right now. I’m sure I will regret not buying it.
Seated at a small table, I took in the rest of the set from a distance.
The setlist was, as Yvette informed us, their new record catharsis peppered with a few older songs. While the crowd was definitely into the new tracks, they noticeably lit up for the opening riff of Shibuya, which is maybe Covet’s most well known song. It was then that I noticed that some of notes coming out of Yvette’s Talman were starting to get a little buzzy. I bring this up not as a criticism or dig at Yvette’s performance, as what she does is more than deserving of high praise. I bring this up because I realized it took nearly an hour before I noticed any signs of fatigue in her playing. I’ve watched power chord bands barely get 3 songs into a set before things got sloppy, and not even in the fun way. I was, quite simply, impressed in a way I had not been in a long while.
Covet ended the night with “lovespell,” one of my favorites off the new album. The song has some fun time changes and reminds me of something written for a early ’90s Sega AM2 arcade game that never existed. As the last notes of the song rang out, Yvette thanked the crowd and wished us goodnight. I sat there for a moment, thinking how I wanted more, and realized how long it had been since I had felt that after a show.
The Shoot
As I said in the write up, it was just moments after I got my cameras out that Covet came out to perform. My camera settings were largely what they were when I photographed Bass Drum of Death a few nights before. The Fujifilm GFX50sII was at 4000 ISO with the Fujifilm 80mm F1.7 R WR, and my trusty Fujifilm x100V was at 6400 ISO. I really enjoy this combo, and with the better lighting at Delmar Hall, the autofocus on my GFX50sII actually kept up pretty well.
The lighting was so good that I was able to shoot with shutter speeds as fast as 1/500, and at f2.8 and smaller for the aperture. I usually only get to those settings and beyond at stadium shows or festivals, so I was pretty happy with that. Even though the autofocus on my Fujifilm GFX50sII performed much better than it has at smaller rooms, it still didn’t nail some shots like I had hoped it would. The plane of focus can be pretty thin on medium format and with the slight shutter lag present on the GFX system, sometimes the subject moved out of that plane by the time the shutter fired. These are all fractions of a second we’re talking about, but they add up.
I wish I had gotten better photos of Jessica Burdeaux, but every time I pointed my camera towards the drum riser, the lighting wasn’t giving me the best exposure. Sometimes that shit happens, and you just do the best you can with it. Yvette and Brandon were lively and wonderful to photograph. I loved Yvette’s houndstooth jacket. Brandon had plenty of bass face on tap. Even though I may not have gotten the photos I wanted, Jessica does all the things that make for great photos when documenting a drummer.
Covet gets the Bryan Sutter seal of approval for bands that are both a pleasure to photograph and to watch perform.
On the editing side, this is the first set of photos I’ve edited with the new AI Denoise feature in Lightroom. I was really impressed with the results, even if I think AI is the devil. Sometimes, the devil knows when you’re lazy.
That’s it! I’m all out of words! Check out the rest of my photos of Covet at Delmar Hall here!