Live Review: Lera Lynn @ Pearl Street Warehouse — 11/7/25

Lera Lynn has been making ethereal, noir-tinged music for a decade and a half. She got her breakthrough when she was cast in the second season of True Detective, working on music for the series with T Bone Burnett and Rosanne Cash. In her recent performance at Pearl Street Warehouse, Lynn showed how she’s she evolved as an artist, while maintaining the core elements of her appeal.

Though she’s often labeled as a country artist, I’m not sure how accurate that label really is. Sure, early on she won Best Country Artist in the Flagpole Awards in Athens, Georgia, where she was studying anthropology at the University of Georgia. She’s collaborated with major figures in country and Americana, like Rodney Crowell (on her duets album, Plays Well With Others). But what I saw and heard at Pearl Street Warehouse on Nov. 7 was a straight-up pop/rock setup — two electric guitars, bass, and drums — playing dreamy music that felt more like Roy Orbison, Chris Isaak, and her contemporary Nicole Atkins than anything out of Nashville.

The two covers in the set, Nirvana’s “Lithium” and TV On the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me,” reinforced this impression. After “Lithium,”  she said, “I feel like we shouldn’t play loud when people are sitting.” I have a couple of things to say in response: We may be sitting, and it may be an early show, but we still want to rock! Just because I’m a responsible middle-aged man who has to get up for work at 6am and has questionable knees, doesn’t mean I don’t want to rock. Also: Loud is relative. Sure, this was louder than a solo acoustic performance, but compared to, say, Dinosaur Jr., this was barely audible.

Lynn told the audience, “We’re doing new songs and deep cuts.” The new songs came from her recently released album, Comic Book Cowboy. Of the title track, someone asked her, “Did you think that was pretty risky to do spoken word and start your album like that?” She wasn’t sure, she said, how to take that.

Watch the official music video for “Comic Book Cowboy” by Lera Lynn on YouTube:

Other songs from the new album included “Beige,” “Cherry Tree,” and “Left Turn Lane.” Her 2016 album, Resistor, got an equal — and perhaps surprising — amount of love, with “Shape Shifter,” which kicked off the set; “Scratch + Hiss”; and her last two songs, “Run The Night” and “What You Done.” “Run the Night,” she said, was “born out of a late-night jam between me and (bandmate) Robbie.” She pulled a couple songs each from the more recent albums On My Own (on which she played all the instruments), “Dark Horse” and “Make You OK,” and 2022’s Something More Than Love: the title cut and “Illusion.”

The set was rounded out with “Whiskey,” the most country-ish song of the evening, “My Least Favorite Life,” and Fade Into The Black.”

Lera made one commented that resonated strongly with me. Talking about tour, she said, “Too much excitement is not good.” My girlfriend and I, who are both on the spectrum, could’ve said it ourselves. It was a nice moment of relatability, the cherry on top of an evening of beautiful music that had me home a little past 9pm, which is always a bonus for this old chunk of coal.

Here are some photos of Lera Lynn performing live at Pearl Street Warehouse on Nov. 7, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of James Todd Miller.