juliaanevillee

[juliaanevillee]

Coming of Age with Foster the People

Torches, Supermodel, and the occasional Sacred Hearts Club song will always be the backdrop to my teenage years. I give way to nostalgia and lend myself to Foster the People as I transcend time.

It’s spring of 2017 again. I’m 13, acne-prone, and my hair post-pixie cut is an awkward length, but at least my music taste is good. My dad made sure of this, finding any opportunity to show me Blondie’s and Björk’s music videos. He loves watching YouTube videos. Ironically, that’s how he found Foster the People: through a University of Virginia campus tour, with “Pumped Up Kicks” in the background (weird origin story, I know).

We sit cross-legged on the grass at Chetzemoka Park, studying the lyrics to “Best Friend.” 

Feelings sleeping in the field again / But I can feel, I can feel, I can feel it's beginning to end

Yeah, premonitions smiling in the dark / Well, I can see, I can see, I can see the story's starting to arc

We hover over that last phrase. 

I focus on my father’s words, drowning out Mark Foster’s voice. He tells me I am witty enough to write television scripts one day. A rare compliment. Usually, he makes fun of me for talking like a “Gilmore Girls” character, oscillating between parallels of Jess’s sarcastic quips and Lorelai’s tantrums. I prefer to draw a comparison with music-obsessed Lane.

Whereas Dad likes “Fire Escape,” I’ve always been partial to “Coming of Age”—probably because throughout my time listening to their discography, I’ve borne witness to my own coming of age. Two years after picking at the Chetzemoka grass, “Imagination” is on repeat as I work my first job cleaning houses. Two Julys later, Dad and I drive through the Berkeley hills blasting “Are You What You Want to Be?” (not yet) through the speakers of his ‘92 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. The top is down and my hair, well past my shoulders now, is blowing hazardously over my eyes. 

I blink and my teenhood is fleeting. It’s spring of 2023 now, and I’m on a first date. The sun relentlessly beams down on us as we curl up on a picnic blanket overlooking Lake Union. “Time to Get Closer” starts playing, and perhaps feeling inspired, I lean into him. He kisses me until I pull away gently, giggling. 

Farfetched dreams conceptualized in the grass. California joyrides. My first kiss. Foster the People was the soundtrack for these sweet, formative moments I tether myself to. 

…

The Album

At 21, I’m more of a music junkie than ever. My taste spans over 8,600 songs clustered together in a comprehensive Spotify playlist I add to daily. I’ve transformed the process of finding and listening to music into an active experience as I pause in grocery stores to Shazam tunes and seek out live shows. If I cheat and count individual artist performances at THING Festival, I have been to 57 concerts. My highest concert streak is three back-to-back weekends. I’ve seen shows in my backyard, 50 feet from where I graduated high school. I’ve hopped around Seattle venues, from Barboza to The Showbox to Tractor Tavern.

Foster the People’s Paradise State of Mind tour at The Paramount stands alone.

When the new album came out—the first one in seven years, aside from the Torches deluxe album in 2021—I was nervous I wouldn’t resonate with their music in the way I had as a teen. 

Yet I suppose it would be naive to expect perfect uninterruptedness. After a pandemic and the departure of two band members, it was inevitable that Foster the People would pivot. I should show the band more grace instead of clinging to what was; I, too, have had characters enter and exit my life, though luckily without it making headlines.

While I didn’t connect with Paradise State of Mind as a whole, “Take Me Back” and “Chasing Low Vibrations” reminded me of the existing continuity between current and past versions of myself. These songs have the same layered neo-psychedelic sound and fusion of indie rock and alternative genres as the earlier albums, forming smile lines on my cheeks and coursing adrenaline in my body.

Foster the People’s music awakens something deeply human in me—raw, visceral, and alive. I knew that if I ever had the chance, I had to experience that energy in its truest form: live.

…

The Concert: Good Neighbours

January 25th was a day I’d blocked out in my calendar months before I acquired a concert ticket, just in case. Good Neighbours were on at 8, but doors opened at 7. When I arrived at The Paramount at quarter to 7—the only time I’m ever early is if I’m attending a concert—the lines were divided into VIP seating and regular entry, wrapping around opposite sides of the building. Visibly ecstatic, we all flowed in at once, filling the balcony and barricade alike in minutes.

This was only my second solo show, the first being Temples at Neumos. I’d tried to convince my dad to come up for the night, but those plans never came to fruition. Although I longingly cast looks at couples and friend groups swaying together to “Sit Next to Me,” I was ultimately glad to experience the concert alone. After all, my resonance with Foster the People’s music is rooted in my relationship with myself.

Good Neighbours assumed the blue-lit stage right on time. Decked out in dress pants and a t-shirt tucked into a blazer, lead singer Oli Fox strutted and danced as he sang “Keep It Up,” establishing an upbeat, infectious stage presence the group maintained throughout their 45-minute set. 

Hailing from East London, Good Neighbours is an indie rock duo composed of Fox and Scott Verrill. In an interview, the band explained they were next-door neighbors in the same studio who made music separately until one day in 2023, they decided to collaborate. “That’s cute,” Fox joked in the interview about the way they met. He explained that their goal for 2025 is to continue working on their debut album.

Without realizing it, I’d heard “Home” and “Daisies” before watching Good Neighbours perform. The chorus of “Home” went viral on the internet before the song was released in January of 2024, and was often used as the backdrop for montages and other nostalgic compilations. 

Of their 11-song setlist, there was an even split between released and unreleased tracks. “Ripple” was unique—dropped the night before their Seattle show, the tour’s opening stop, making my city the first to hear it live after its streaming debut. Of their unreleased songs, “Starry Eyed” was my favorite. It was catchy, romantic, and a perfect complement to Foster the People’s “Best Friend,” with layered harmonies and the intimate chorus line:

Look at you, look at me / Don’t you know that we could be starry eyed

By the time Good Neighbours wrapped up their set with 'Daisies,' I, along with the other photographers, had been ushered out of the pit. I lingered as close to the barricade as I could, beaming with pride for knowing the song before tonight.

Halfway through “Daisies,” the girl standing next to me whispered a question. I later learned her name was Marissa and she’s been listening to Foster the People for about half her life, like me. She found out about them through her older sister, and “Houdini” is one of her favorite songs, though she’s a longtime lover of the entire Torches album.

“Are you the singer’s girlfriend?” Marissa asked.

“What?” I said, genuinely not hearing her.

“I said, are you dating the singer?”

Oh my God. There’s no way she just asked me that. “Girl, no, I’m just a journalist,” I laughed. “I wish I knew him like that.”

“Oh! I saw you in the pit and thought maybe you were with him.”

“I wish I could say that!”

Our interaction reminded me of Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners, who performed at THING Festival in 2023. My friends and I stood at the barricade, listening as a proud girlfriend’s dad hyped up the band—“the boys,” as he called them—explaining how they practiced in his basement and how he never realized they were this good.

Moments like these unravel the context behind the music. Who are the important characters involved? What are they writing about? Whose basement do they practice in? What an honor for me to be mistaken for such an important character in Good Neighbours’ narrative. 

…

The Concert: Foster the People

At 9:18 pm, the lights dimmed and the crowd erupted into cheer. The moment had arrived: Mark Foster was about to breathe the same air as us, bind strangers together and address us as a collective, serenade us in this liminal space with songs he wrote a few months ago and others he penned a decade ago.

Foster the People opened with “Feed Me,” a track from Paradise State of Mind that I wasn’t familiar with enough to immediately recognize. But when the unmistakable synths of “Helena Beat” hit, I screamed for a solid five seconds. The lights cast Foster in red as he turned his back to the audience, raising his arm in the air, then facing us again to sing. The crowd mirrored his movements, swinging their hands and belting the chorus in unison.

The band’s intricate instrumentation made it surreal to witness them play—strumming their guitars, pounding the drums, and tapping their feet in rhythm with the very music they’d created. In "Pseudologia Fantastica," the fusion of electronic and organic elements struck a chord within me, capturing the tension between illusion and reality. It was as if the music itself embodied the battle between fantasy and truth. I danced, feeling that push and pull within the rhythm.

I was relieved and excited to hear mostly older songs throughout the set. I didn’t need to do my usual “concert homework” with these tracks—they were embedded in my memory, and every note felt like a reunion with my younger self.

Between "Afterlife" and "Call It What You Want," Foster spoke to the crowd in a more serious tone. “I’m sick of all the fear and all the tension and everything that’s going on,” he confided to the 3,000 of us in the venue. “That’s why we play music: to express that stuff.” His words hung in the air as he prepared to express that stuff again.

“Houdini,” “Imagination,” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Destroying the Moon” tugged at my senses, unraveling memories of bus rides and walks and other in-betweens from when I first encountered these songs. My dream came true at 9:50 pm, with the opening notes to “Coming of Age.”

Someone told me once that half the excitement at a show is wondering if your favorite song will be played. There’s a euphoric rush when a song you love but didn’t expect to hear makes the setlist. “Coming of Age” was both. It’s not one of their biggest hits, but then again, neither was “Time to Get Closer,” which was also performed (and, naturally, made me think of that flawless first date).

Yet surprisingly, as “Coming of Age” unfolded, I was not stirred by the past. I was an active participant in the moment, fixating on the warm-toned stage lights dancing in perfect sync with the chorus drums. Strangers on the balcony swayed their bodies, perhaps simultaneously reminiscing on and partaking in their own coming of age. Foster ignited a truly magical moment when he led a clap for the final chorus, only slightly interrupted by a fan in front of me screaming even louder than I was when Foster walked over to us. 

This performance was my coming of age—a decade of memories converging in a single night, stitched together by the songs that underscored every phase of my life. Foster the People knew this. They understood the weight of nostalgia embedded in the very existence of this concert. They were aware of exactly what we had come for: the oldies we never thought we’d hear live, the soundtrack of our past reclaimed tonight. And they delivered.

Of course, the obligatory encore ended with “Pumped Up Kicks” as a rewind and reference to the band’s coming of age. Foster blew a kiss and thanked us for the privilege of performing tonight in this iconic theater. After the show, I lingered, waiting for the magic to settle. I scored a set list and quickly realized each song was abbreviated: “Pumped Up Kicks” was reduced to “Kicks.” Very fitting.

The fragments of the night had already begun to slip into memory.  

By Julia Neville