In terms of ideal concerts venues, it’s hard to beat Pumpehuset’s Byhaven on a warm summer evening. A break from the more extreme heat makes sitting outside very enticing, and New York synth-pop group Ava Luna are the perfect band for the setting. They essentially play block part music: It’s mostly dance-y, has a decent beat, but isn’t so deafeningly loud that you can’t decipher the three-part harmonies.
But maybe the setting isn’t perfect for the music. Not if you’re a performer, anyway. The perfect summer setting of Byhaven means that loads of people who aren’t especially fussed about the music are having drinks and chatting with their friends in the shade of Pumpehuset’s main building. Ava Luna start their set off unannounced, with a song so mellow it’s hard to tell initially if they’ve started to play or are still tuning up. Few people move towards the stage, even is as it becomes clear that the show is getting going.
If the band are discouraged by the inattention, they don’t let it show. Ava Luna know how to sell a song. Singers Felicia Douglass and Rebecca Kauffman have different, energetic performing styles — Douglass bops around with a fluid energy while Kauffman has more of a rigid theatricality — but the deliver every tune like the whole garden is rapt in their attention. The performance is balanced well, switching between singers and choosing key moments to play up the harmonies; leaning more into bright, vibrant synth lines; and deliberately slowing things down. It feels like the setlist has been chosen deliberately for the audience, for people who might want to get up and dance and acquiescing to those who want pleasant background music. It’s just curious that there is courtyard full of people who don’t realize what they’re missing out on.
