Lead singer Justin Osborne introduced the title track off Susto’s album and, as if on cue, the stage mellowed into a teal pool of soothing light melting into an auburn purple on the edges, like a pulsing, breathing reef, and we — the crowd — are the divers, searching for air and wonder in this melody.
The five-piece Charleston band is opening for the Lumineers on their Cleopatra World Tour, and, if the Lumineers are a campfire, Susto is a sea.
The melody merged into the next song and the drums exploded from a hum to a collision and, as a room, our hearts beat in time as yellow bubbles of light rose from the stage towards the ceiling and around the room, and we felt ourselves rise from the reef and onto the surf and the tide and the rocks. As the set continued, the lights pulsed more frantically. Into this teal sea of upward-turned faces, Susto ended their set. “I can’t find a lover,” Osborne sang, but, as he sang them, the words proved themselves false. Because as they left the stage, Susto left the ocean of a room endeared to their songs.