We recently reported on co-founder Darren Criss rejoining Team StarKid on their current Apocalyptour, and last night was his first performance with the group at the Los Angeles House of Blues. Darren will join StarKid onstage again tonight at their final L.A. show, participating in the main event, but last night he simply warmed up the crowd with a stripped-down solo set of his original songs before watching the performance that his friends have been taking on the road.
Darren’s setlist was as follows:
“It’s Over Now” (from Little White Lie)
“Human”
“Don’t You”
“Beauty” (from Starship)
“To Have A Home” (from A Very Potter Sequel)
“Status Quo” (from Starship)
“Good Ol’ Moon”
Interestingly, this is the first set that we’ve heard of – in three years – which consisted solely of Darren’s original songs. Long before Glee was a factor in Darren’s career, he was well-known for his re-interpretations of songs from every genre – particularly his YouTube videos covering Disney numbers. A standard Darren Criss set has come to include songs he’s written for StarKid, songs he’s written as an indie musician – including his Human EP and a handful of other tunes – and songs that he’s famously covered, these days including piano or guitar renditions of some of his Glee numbers. But last night, for the first time this writer can recall as a Darren Criss fan, every song in his set was a Criss original.
Dropping the covers is definitely a new development. Some hardcore fans would say that a StarKid show is no place to be drawing attention to the Glee aspect, but Darren did perform “Teenage Dream” at the SPACE Tour last November, and his Disney covers have become somewhat engrained in the StarKid mythos themselves, being the first thing most fans discovered about their new Harry after first watching A Very Potter Musical.
We’re really impressed with the strength of Darren’s short, all-original setlist (particularly the powerful opening number, which is rarely played by Darren and may, on certain days, be this writer’s very favorite of his songs), and we wonder if this choice might be a turning point for his career as a musician – if he’s possibly working on creating an identity for his solo music in preparation for the release of an album?
Darren also joined friend and collaborator Charlene Kaye – who has been on the road as StarKid’s opening act – during her set, to perform “Dress and Tie,” the single the pair released in 2010.
We’ve found a couple of videos for you if you weren’t lucky enough to be there:
Isn’t this delightful? We’ll take the scruffy, bearded, indie-rock Darren Criss over Blaine Anderson’s hair gel and auto-tune any day. What do you think about Darren’s performance last night and what the lack of his trademark cover songs might mean? What’s your favorite Darren cover song and Darren original song?