What Color Is She? Pale Orange, Woody Brown, and a Mixed Green
She’s Green with Sunshy, Avsha at Schubas. A low-expectation weeknight show became an unexpected pleasure, tracing color and texture through live sound.
I’m not a big fan of shoegaze. Listening to it for more than an hour often puts me into a strange emotional and sensory state somewhere between bored and numb (please don’t hate me for that). I had listened to She’s Green’s albums a few times before, but I didn’t feel especially drawn to them. Still, a lot of my friends had just gone to their China tour, and spoke very highly of the shows. After enough enthusiastic recommendations, I noticed they were playing as part of Tomorrow Never Knows festival at Schubas Tavern, so I bought a ticket. For me, music like shoegaze, that highly amplifies sensory emotion, just works so much better live. It cannot be replicated through even the best headphones or speakers. Only in that crowded room, surrounded by sound and vibration, did their music fully make sense to me.
The opening acts were Sunshy and Avsha, both of whom I knew almost nothing about beforehand. But the moment Sunshy started playing, I felt myself getting excited. When the guitarist suddenly pulled out a tambourine and layered it with a synth melody, I could clearly feel my dopamine spike. The two sounds seemed to drift just outside the noise they’d already built, yet somehow merged into a satisfying chemical reaction. It feels like pulling the secret figure from a Pop Mart blind box, completely unexpected, and genuinely delightful. Most of what they played that night came from their only album, I Don’t Care What Comes Next. When their set ended, I immediately added it to my playlist. I was also happy to learn that they’re a Chicago local band. I’d definitely go see them again if I get the chance.
Next, Avsha came on stage and sat down on a chair at the front. In the darkness, only a single spotlight fell on him. Aside from the guitar in his hands, there were no additional effects or layered textures. A calm, reassuring kind of beauty flowed straight from his fingers. Between songs, he chatted with the audience and shared small stories (his humor was great), but it never felt like he was interrupting the music. His voice itself felt like it was telling a story, slowly and continuously, turning the set into something like an intimate storytelling session.
By then, the show had already been going on for almost two hours. My back was getting sore, but I still felt mentally energized. I glanced behind me and realized the room was completely packed. “Let’s see how this goes,” I thought to myself.
After a brief equipment check, She’s Green’s set began.
Green light softly filled the space as two guitars intertwined, forming a hazy, dreamlike wall of sound. I could feel the vibrations coming up from the floor, traveling from my feet to my arms and into my scalp, as if my body had been reduced to nothing but hearing and sight. After the first few songs, I was fully immersed. Onstage, the band created a strong sense of “organic dynamic.” The guitar and bass were often facing each other, like they were trading energy in some invisible magnetic field. The vocalist’s movements on stage felt like a light stream flowing through the sound. Rather than functioning as “expression,” her voice became another instrument. Its texture reminded me of extremely fine, densely packed sand on a beach, sometimes catching little flashes of light.
Before the last song, a band member pulled out his phone and read from a note he had prepared, speaking out against ICE and the recent oppression in Minnesota. The crowd reacted instantly—cheering, clapping, and shouting in support. As a band from Minnesota, the moment didn’t feel performative at all. It carried a weight that was raw and real.
The final song was “Mandy.” The stage lights kept shifting. If their other songs felt more like sheets of sound, this one somehow felt more linear, more confessional. As the stage suddenly went dark and several intense beams of light flickered through the darkness, the music came to an end. Slowly, my senses and body were pulled back into reality.
After the show, I talked with She’s Green’s bassist Teddy a bit. He said a lot about their recent China tour, showed me a lot of photos and talked about watching shows at venues in Beijing. Given how strict performance regulations can be in China, I was happy they completed the tour smoothly. I also tried speaking Mandarin with their guitarist Raines, who’d studied Chinese for over a decade. Honestly, his Mandarin surprised me. We had no trouble communicating at all. He even had a bit of a Beijing accent.
I was especially curious about the origin of the name She’s Green. Teddy explained that they’d tested many different names before landing on this one, and over time it picked up more meaning—connections to the idea of a motherland, references to Scottish mythology, and even their song “Syndulla,” named for the green-skinned Star Wars Rebels character. If he had to describe their music with a color, he’d still choose green. Growing up in the suburbs, surrounded by plants, gave him a close relationship with nature. And in Minnesota, like much of the Midwest, winters are long and gray. When green finally returns, it signals warmth, renewal, and spring. That sense of nature and life is the color of their music.
By the end of the night, I found myself unconsciously assigning colors to the music as I listened. If I had to summarize: Sunshy felt like pale orange dotted with flashes of bright blue; Avsha was a woody brown; and She’s Green didn’t feel like pure green at all, but more like large swaths of yellow mixed with small traces of green, unevenly dispersed in a pool of very light purple water. If my painting skills were better, I’d love to put these sensations on canvas.
edited by Josephine Milea.
photos by Yining Wang.