Friday night, The Ark. People are flooding into the venue and checking the details on their tickets. Some walk around to the merch line, where t-shirts, tote bags, and other items hang on a display rack on the wall, with the word “RABBITOLOGY” stamped onto it.
With millions of streams and 300k+ monthly listeners on Spotify, Nat Timmerman (RC 2026), is the star of the show tonight. Her fans, painted green in the arms and body (perhaps to emulate the verdant imagery in Nat’s songs), simmer in chatter and excited giggles, and it’s at this moment where Rabbitology’s popularity hits me.
The show opened with indie folk band Lost Mary, who hyped the crowd up with jokes about the “Big Blue House”, and their new single. After a brief intermission, Nat entered the stage to cheers and screams from the crowd. Two rows behind me were tween girls, who excitedly whispered at the beginning of each song that Nat played.
“CANDLEBURN” was one of the first songs she played – an upbeat song about an apple, apparently, and one that Nat attributed as “the first song I wrote in my freshman year dorm”, as she bit off a juicy chunk of a red apple and raising it high into the air. “Sweet Death of Me” was written while watching “the sunrise from good old East Quad”, a lovely tribute to the artistic tune of the RC.
Her 1.5 hour show was a sensory experience, with folklore music that was reminiscent of the Scottish highlands (or any highlands in general). Her song “Bog Bodies” was quite clearly a crowd favourite, as the same tween girl behind me shook her dad with excitement and whisper-screamed, “it’s Bog Bodies!”. For good reason – “Bog Bodies” is a dreamy, harmonic mix that transports you to a fairytale world in the swamps.
Nat kept the audience entertained with her down-to-earth humor, cursing at her mixing console for failing to smoothly transition between songs, and asking the audience to participate by stomping their feet, clicking, or clapping. Even as an amateur to the folk genre, Rabbitology was a pleasant discovery, and Nat’s acknowledgement of East Quad, her dorm, and the sunset made the crowd of strangers feel much closer.
