Last Updated on March 5, 2024, 9:21 PM | Published: March 5, 2024
OKLAHOMA CITY — The music of Nabihah Iqbal is so expansive, so widescreen, that it’s hard to believe it can be contained on the small upstairs stage at Ponyboy. But when the British-born shoegazer makes her way through OKC for the first time ever on March 16th, she’ll be bringing all of that atmosphere and sweeping, dream-drenched feeling along with her.
At times pulsing with the beats and textures of British trance, at others driving like post-punk or floating away on little more than sparse, airy guitar strums or minimalist synth pads, Iqbal’s newest album – 2023’s aptly titled “DREAMER” – expertly rejects the usually hazy detachment of dream-pop.
Music and film
by Brett Fieldcamp
Sponsored by True Sky Credit Union
Instead, her sound is resolved, her voice pointed and direct, and her words evocative, almost spiritual, in the faces of love and the worldly detractions that would keep love down.
All of which is hardly surprising given her background.
“I think the music always comes from a personal place,” Iqbal told me over the phone from Los Angeles, where she’s been staying between legs of this American tour. “But evolution is the whole point of creating. You can’t just keep doing the same thing. You’ve got to follow what you feel.”
That’s been especially true in her case.
Before she began releasing albums under her own name, she was Throwing Shade. Before that, she was a human rights lawyer.
At every turn, on every path, Iqbal’s work has been influenced and informed by the blunt realities of the world and her consistent willingness to confront and comment on them.
“If you have any kind of platform, that’s really quite a special thing in itself,” she said. “You’ve got people who are kind of tuned into what you’re saying and what you represent, and so your mouthpiece becomes a lot louder all of a sudden. And then it’s up to you how you want to use it, because it’s easy to just shy away from everything.”
Shying away is clearly not Iqbal’s style.
Even when her studio was burgled and a full album’s worth of material was stolen. Even when a visit to her grandparents turned into lockdown in Pakistan for months when COVID shut down the world. Even when overwhelmed by the demands of building “DREAMER” back among the tireless fray of London, she kept finding new avenues for rising to meet each challenge.
“It was really difficult for me to make this record for loads of reasons,” she said. “So in the end, I went up to Scotland, to a really remote place where it was a two-hour walk to the nearest store. I was really alone. And I made the album just surrounded by nature, just turned off my phone and worked on music all day.”
That quiet, natural environment is reflected all over “DREAMER,” even in the more driving, electronic tracks. There’s a duality throughout the record, often pulling between the connection of the natural world and the disconnection of isolation, like becoming engulfed by empty space.
You’d expect that to be a challenging sound to recreate live, but she’s got backup to help fill in the endless textures and hypnotic beats, even while retaining the looseness and humanism in the songs.
“I was quite clear with the band, you know, ‘listen to the songs and learn them, but don’t feel like we have to replicate them like they are on the record,'” she said. “That’s never going to happen. There’s just too many layers.”
When Iqbal takes the Ponyboy stage, it’ll just be her and multi-instrumentalist Al Robinson building the tunes live through guitar layers, loops, samples, and of course Iqbal’s own voice.
“Every single time we perform, even when it’s a two-person thing, where it’s just me and Al, the versions are quite different, like he’s playing saxophone on some of the tracks, which is something totally new and not even on the record,” she said. “The energy that you get from playing music live, even for an audience that has listened to it recorded, it’s just always different. Every time is exciting, and I really appreciate that.”
For a mind as worldly and culturally conscious as Iqbal’s, touring has the added benefit of providing new connections to new communities and an ever-greater understanding of what she calls the “vastness” of a nation like ours.
Her music has taken her to Australia, to Russia, to China, and all over the US. But she’s never been to Oklahoma.
As a genre-crossing, boundary-pushing artist, her music draws her to OKC’s own wildly diverse creative landscape, just as her action and activism might draw her toward the always bleeding hearts of our history.
But there’s at least one other unexpected element of Oklahoma that’s on Iqbal’s mind ahead of her stop here.
“‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is actually one of my favorite books,” she said. “So that’s another reason why I’m really excited to come.”
Ponyboy presents Nabihah Iqbal with special guest Olivia Komahcheet Saturday, March 16th.
For times, tickets, and more, visit ponyboyokc.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
