The Marías know how to cast a spell.
Swaying between cinematic melodrama and starry-eyed repose with ease, the psychedelic indie-soul group bewitched Oakland on March 11. Lead singer María Zardoya, drummer Josh Conway and their magnificent live band fused fantasy and reality into a velvety, beautifully bleary nebula.
Red haze washed over Fox Theater, charging the evening with eerie galvanism as cheers erupted to “Just a Feeling.” As the instrumental interlude burned slowly, Zardoya, Conway and their band members stepped out onto stage and launched into their coruscant hit “Calling U Back,” snapping the audience into hypnosis.
Beyond captivating, Zardoya smoldered with charisma at center stage. Her loose feathery skirt swirled around her like tendrils of inky fog, her hips swaying and her black bob cut billowing. During vocal runs, her arms would extend outwards like branches in spring, so elegant that one might expect blossoms to sprout from her extended fingertips.
While her stage presence radiated with the force of a summer heat wave, Zardoya’s voice was the essence of springtime. Her voice glissaded through the air like thistledown. Crowd members swayed like long blades of grass in the wind, a willowy meadow of transfixed bluestem and crocus.
Strobing lights sped up or slowed down to meet each song’s natural pace, enhancing The Marías’ irresistible magnetic field. Zardoya rarely broke this entrancing atmosphere, pausing only to thank her audience intermittently as well as note early on that she “couldn’t think of a venue more perfect for CINEMA.”
The Marías’ 2021 debut album CINEMA is like the soundtrack of a restless dream, and Fox Theater was the perfect setting for such beauty to unfold. The setlist flitted by swiftly and smoothly, but the evening came to a standstill for the band’s trumpet player, who shone in a spotlight during his rich, glorious solo for “Hable con Ella.”
Blue light ebbed like the tide for “Only In My Dreams” and “Over the Moon,” Zardoya’s voice floating through the venue with the delicacy of a dewy cobweb. Sensual reds, pinks and purples swamped the stage as Zardoya launched into her tantalizing cover of “…Baby One More Time.”
“You got the moonlight stuck in your teeth,” she lilted during “Little By Little,” a teasing smile sliding onto her lips, her chorus followed by the sweet declaration “Vamos a quedarnos en tu cielo, amor.”
With a gleam in her eye, Zardoya acknowledged her Latine audience later in the night, the Puerto Rican singer grinning from ear to ear as concertgoers shouted “¡Te quiero!” and other affections.
Materializing magic, The Marías personified the paradox of laidback luxury with the show’s hour-long set. Zardoya, who occasionally exchanged knowing glances with Conway behind her on the drums, couldn’t help but grin when the crowd cheered for her boyfriend’s few and far between vocal solos. Zardoya expectedly swirled around the stage for the sultry, serene choruses of “Spin Me Around,” and the set ended with an amped-up version of “All I Really Want Is You,” its fadeout hard-hitting and extravagant.
As encore demands turned to delighted shrieks, Zardoya emerged from a central archway’s curtain, standing still as an unearthly yet still ethereal presence — she hung her neck ever so slightly, her arms limp at her sides as thundering bass made the theater shudder. Crimson light pulsed rapidly as the band launched into “Hush” with haunting vigor and phenomenal, full-blown intensity.
The seduction of “Hush” soon evaporated into wholesome warmth, as the blithe instrumental opening of “Cariño” fluttered through the venue. Zardoya bounced along joyfully, her black bob haircut swaying as everyone sang, “Cariño, eres un amor!”
Bringing otherworldly allure and romanticism to Oakland, The Marías exquisitely balanced spectacle with intimacy. Even after the band left the stage, Fox Theater seemed to hum with magic and felicity — a trance that never quite lifted.
