At Elsewhere or Anywhere, Go See Alice Longyu Gao
I’ve seen Alice Longyu Gao four times, in three distinct periods of their career. Twice in 2022, when they performed a handful of times at the monthly hyperpop event in Los Angeles called Heav3n. Once again in 2024 for their annual Lunar New Year event, Alice the Club. And now, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her at New York City’s Elsewhere, the same club where she performed some of her first ever shows.
Having followed her for years, I can confidently say: Right now Alice Longyu Gao is at the top of their game. Their Smoke Is Too Tough. Their Swag Too Different. Their White Boy Princess Too Bad. They Want To Kill Xem. Literally (More On That Later).
In the year since I’ve last seen Alice, I’ve noticed a stark difference in their performance. She is outwardly more confident, and significantly more physical.
During the show, Alice keeps her stage bare aside from a lone harp that’s played sporadically. Because there's nothing to look at except Alice, you’re forced to watch her move her body in almost excruciating, visceral fashion.
In her performance, Alice runs, jumps, and flails. With every syllable and sound that bursts out of them, Alice’s body twists and contorts in response. In slower sections, this means she’s sweeping her arms out in long, fluid, dramatic motions into the air before gesturing towards the clamoring audience. Conversely, speedier sections seemed to possess Alice with sporadic, frantic movements. At one instance, her head will whip to the side as she throws her arms out into sharp right angles before pulling them almost magnetically back into her torso. Suddenly, her arms explode back out towards the audience propelling her in a slick pose before she belts out the next chorus.
All of this movement, sustained over a four act show.
That’s right, like Alice’s career, the Debut Trilogy Tour is brought to you in four distinct parts. What’s distinct about them? Alice’s narration!
“You are not my target audience. I am your target audience.” She informed her listeners to raucous applause. “Anyways, this is just my side hustle.”
What’s her real goal anyways? To be a comedian on SNL!
And granted, she has the comedic chops to deliver. In addition to the lines above, her set had loads of good bits, including her demand we stop drinking milk entirely “because we are not babies.” She delivered an impassioned speech about Bladee and her desire for more “white boy princesses” (whatever that means). At one point, Alice began plucking the sad “meow meow meow meow” TikTok song on her harp that anyone who's spent time scrolling those shitty AI reels has inevitably seen.
Part of her comedic appeal comes from the weird, earnest delivery that only develops after spending a large majority of one’s social interactions online. She proudly claimed that “like us, [she was] chronically online.” She was quick to remind us to not get it twisted though; “Remember: You are not my target audience. I am your target audience.”
However, there was one person in the crowd there to upstage Alice that night. This ridiculously drunk woman in a red dress and her equally belligerent friend were beyond inebriated, and as the set progressed, they kept getting sloppier and sloppier. They bumped into people, they spilled their drinks on others, they kept taking flash videos of each other in the middle of the set; the whole thing was obscene.
Alice, oblivious to the chaos that was happening in our little section of the crowd, played an unreleased track for us. Gleefully, Alice explained to us that the song, a tribute to Bladee, would never be released, so we better enjoy it now because we may never hear it again. Of course, this brought out some cheers from the crowd at having been there for this special moment. But just as the applause was starting to die down and the crowd was beginning to get a little quieter, the drunk woman in the red dress decided to scream out at the top of her lungs:
“KILL YOURSELF!”
As the crowd turned to stare in shock, I swear some lights turned on near us to illuminate her. Dozens of eyes looked at her horrified. Only then did she seem to realize how horrible her statement was.
“Oh my god,” she muttered into her hand, eyes reflexively dropping to the floor. She looked ready to melt into the ground.
Her other drunk friend quickly grabbed her and whispered loudly “We need to go NOW!” Stumbling towards the exit, they giggled their way out the door, never to be seen again.
Alice never acknowledged it, and for all I know Alice never heard it. They moved on like nothing happened – Alice, if you are reading this then I’m sorry, you need to know what was said in the crowd that night. It was probably the worst and funniest thing that anyone could have said or done at your show. It was the opposite of Community▲. But truthfully – I still haven’t stopped laughing about that. If you want to be the “underground” terminally-online artist like you claim, then I hope you’re ready to embrace the cringe; and to your credit, it seems like you do for the most part. I mean, you played a TikTok song on your harp as a transition into “(Intro) Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn, And Retire.” If that’s the audience you want, then keep embracing it.
With all that being said; Alice is one of a kind. They refuse to do encores, their joke delivery is a highlight, and the set is bold, visceral, and catchy!
Nothing illustrates Alice Longyu Gao’s distinctness better than witnessing the beginning of the show. As soon as the lights dimmed, Alice stormed out to the absolutely nuts stuttering vocal stims of “<3 Korean Girls,” a song whose energy could fuel an entire encore on its own. Starting the night off with such an energetic high point was ambitious, as she was now expected to carry that momentum throughout the rest of the show. Yet, Alice easily rose to the task.
Alice maintained the excitement throughout, playing loud braggadocious highlights from their repertoire including “100 boyfriends”, “Make U 3 Me”, and “Come to Brazil.” These songs had the audience screaming, dancing, and jumping along to the frantic catchy choruses.
But in addition to the noisy chaos and feral screams Alice was clearly having a blast emitting, she also knew how to pace the crowd. “Slower” songs (I use that term loosely because even the slowest songs devolve into earsplitting, maddening walls of sound) like “Bird W/O Nest” let the audience breathe for a bit as she played the slow intro on her harp before the track transitioned into a beautiful sweeping epic. Others like the aforementioned “(Intro) Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn, And Retire” began with her playing the harp beautifully. Gradually, her playing became more discordant and jarring, until she was only playing wrong notes. Hearing this wrong sounding instrument, you’re expecting something to shift when the song shatters into sudden sounds of broken glass and Alice is screaming a list of her truths and prayers alongside a mimicking robotic voice.
Alice’s songs are already out there. But from the excitement and fanaticism of the crowd, you wouldn’t know it.
“Authenticity will always get recognized,” Alice proclaimed. It’s a statement I can’t help but agree with. Alice Longyu Gao is undeniably at their artistic peak right now, both in the studio and on stage.
Go see them immediately.
[Alice Longyu Gao uses she/her and they/them pronouns, as well as neopronouns including xe/xir. Out of respect and Community▲, we have decided to use she/her and they/them pronouns for this article.]
Written by: Peter Samuel Swan