Los Angeles Falls Under Ellise’s Dark Pop Spell in Her Final PRETTY EVIL Tour Stop: Live Review
- Mikaila Storrs
- Aug 27
- 3 min read
Ellise brought her debut headline run, the PRETTY EVIL Tour, to a triumphant close on Sunday night at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles. The air was thick with anticipation before her arrival, broken only by a disembodied voice declaring “There can’t be pretty without evil” and a ghostly loop of “Can you hear me?” that hung in the room like an incantation.
The show began with “PRETTY,” the album’s haunting opener, kicking the night off with "Happy ever after with me / But it's never really all that pretty". Even when the lights faltered, she didn’t miss a beat, smiling at the glitch and declaring, “We’re going to play the songs whether the lights work or not.” That offhand defiance set the tone for a night of catharsis and dark playfulness.
She tore through “runaway bride,” a surging pulse of pop adrenaline, and “cherry on top,” a guitar-heavy eruption that shook the room. Highlights of the night were “KEROSENE” from the deluxe version of PRETTY EVIL and the older track “KILLER,” where Ellise truly shined. These performances were electric, with her vocals commanding every note, and the crowd responded with equal fervor, singing along and feeding off her energy, screaming: "I love to be lonely and / You don't do it for me / I watch you drink the poison / But I'm not Juliet, and Shakespeare bores me."
But Ellise’s most luminous moments weren’t necessarily the loudest. One of the night’s core emotional pivots came when she stopped to talk about her breakup, the worst of her life, she admitted, though the tour had given those songs new memories, new weight. An audience member shouted, “Fuck him,” and she grinned, answering back, “Yeah, fuck him.” From there, she slipped into a stripped-back set, braiding “feel better together” and “valentine” into something hushed and intimate. She sang like she was writing in a diary aloud, but still threw a middle finger to the crowd on the line “Kissing us both in the same car,” a wink of dark humor amidst the ache.
Other moments carried their own gravity. “ballerina” shimmered with vulnerability as she recalled moving to Los Angeles at seventeen, crushed by comparisons that only sharpened under the industry’s microscope. She danced through lyrics like "Bent and bleeding / So I could squeeze in your / Little tiny box for little tiny dancers."
Later, Ella Boh joined her for an unreleased track titled “die,” before the floor shook again with “DEAD2ME” and the collective scream of “911.” The night seemed to wind down, but the crowd refused to let her go, chanting “Encore, encore!” until her drummer shouted, “You’re not loud enough!” Ellise returned with a grin, igniting the stage once more for a final encore with “committed for life.” Fans danced, sang, and cheered with every word, leaving the Moroccan Lounge buzzing with energy as Ellise exited the stage—bold, fearless, and unforgettable, a perfect conclusion to her first headline tour.
Though Ellise has been in the industry for a decade, she feels like she’s only just begun, having perfected her dark-pop, Tim Burton–esque world. And with new music already on the horizon, one thing is clear: she’s just getting started, and nothing is holding her back.
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