Fresh off the start of the “Kicking My Feet World Tour”, Australian Pop Singer-Songwriter Ruel touched down at The Fillmore Silver Spring (Silver Spring, MD) on February 22nd. The DMV area is no stranger to showing up for Ruel, as he’s previously played at the 9:30 club in Washington, D.C. on the 4th Wall Tour in 2023 (as Ruel claimed was his favorite show of that tour), and Songbyrd in Washington, D.C. on the Free Time Tour in 2019, and now closing out his biggest show in the area thus far. Although the snow had been piling on throughout the day, that didn’t stop a jam-packed crowd from filling the room from the barricade to the merch table.
The Kicking My Feet World Tour highlights Ruel’s second album “Kicking My Feet”, which follows themes of love and loving unapologetically, seemingly an antithesis to his previous breakup-coded debut album “4th Wall”. However, the setlist catered to fans of Ruel from any era, whether they’ve been around since his first EP or have just recently started listening. To start the show, Ruel emerged from a backlit door, almost like a portal that brought him onto the stage, and began with “Only Ever” and “Not What’s Going On”, both from his recent album. Throughout the show, Ruel’s instrumental talents were highlighted as well, with him playing the piano on “Even Angels Won’t”, and playing the guitar on “Destroyer”, “No News is Good News”, and “Wild Guess”. A fan favorite of the night included the unreleased song “Don’t Say That”, a longer continuation of the last song from the kicking my feet album “dst (outro)”, that left fans begging for the full single to be released.
The encore truly covered the broadness of Ruel’s career span, starting with “Japanese Whiskey”, a song from “4th Wall” that many fans asked to be on the setlist this time around, and one that Ruel stripped down beautifully and had the audience mesmerized. Following that, in line with the covers that Ruel has been performing on this tour, he performed another stripped-down rendition, this time of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Lastly, Ruel closed with the title song of the tour, “Kicking My Feet”, and surely had everyone in the audience kicking their feet after an emotional, heartfelt, and captivating show.
- Kylie Hoover
Photos Courtesy of Kylie Hoover (For Bell Music Magazine)
