Chloé Marie stood at the crescent-shaped altar tucked into the bar at Loa on Wednesday night during the fourth set of the Lilith in Loa series, the makeshift stage lit like any object of haute religiosity — flickering candlelight pooling across the room and casting everyone in the same amber glow. It was the kind of light that asks a room to slow down, and it did exactly that, setting the atmosphere for what was about to unfold. Her fans sat in anticipation as she set down her Chloé Marie tote and began tuning her cream-colored guitar, unhurried, the way you tune something you trust.
Loa lent her the time and space to show her fans just how close a crowd can get when the environment invites it. And Loa does invite it. There was a version of Laurel Canyon in that room — the same unguarded, communal energy that surrounded Joan Baez, Tracy Chapman, and Joni Mitchell when they were first finding their voices among each other.
Her style is unmistakably Gen Z: thrifted layers, delicate gold jewelry stacked without trying too hard, soft and unfussy hair, the kind of effortless, slightly undone look you'd find scrolling her Instagram between coffee runs and studio sessions. It reads young. It reads like someone still figuring herself out in public, the way all twenty-somethings are. And that's what makes the moment she opens her mouth so disarming — because the voice that comes out belongs to someone who has lived through every kind of heartbreak there is, five times over. It's a haunting voice, one that settles into the room and doesn't leave when the song ends. The juxtaposition is the whole point: a young woman dressed like she just left a vintage shop, singing like she's already survived three lifetimes of love.
The way her fingers graced the strings looked effortless, almost incidental, but the minor chords that came through the amp carried real weight — enough to turn a bar into a place where you go to sit with your latest heartbreak on purpose. She moved through her set by giving the room the story of her life, and with it, a window into how she actually writes.
Chloé Marie became the authority on storytelling in that room and never let the audience forget she was building an environment they were meant to melt into. She told us that she sometimes writes songs that feel like they could belong to someone else entirely — that fans often come back to her afterward, asking how she managed to write a song about exactly who they are and exactly how they feel. She played across her discography, from early tracks like "Tall Lover" through to the song that found her an audience far beyond New Orleans, "An Honest Woman," which she saved for last.
"An Honest Woman" is a love song for anyone who has ever wanted to run from the very thing they ache to surrender to. She refuses the sweet names — baby, darling, honey — as though tenderness itself might trap her. But beneath every protest is a confession: she is already falling. The song's romance lives in that exquisite contradiction, between wanting to remain untamed and wanting desperately to belong to someone. Love arrives without permission and sees something in her she cannot yet see in herself: a woman worthy of devotion. By the end, "don't make me yours" sounds heartbreakingly close to please, choose me anyway.
Paired with her enigmatic voice, she haunted the halls of Loa and the International House Hotel long after the last chord had faded, the echo of her doing exactly what a haunting voice is supposed to do.
This performance was the fourth in an ongoing series at Loa, with two more nights still to come: Zahria Sims and Saskia Walker.
