Marrying jazz, pop, and heartfelt lyricism, Laufey delivers an unforgettable night on her Matter of Time Laval tour stop – a spellbinding performance that feels suspended halfway between fond memory and daydream.
By Jamie Xie
It was only a matter of time before Laufey arrived at Place Bell in Quebec on October 21st, 2025, for the third-to-last stop of her A Matter of Time tour’s North American leg. Fresh off a record-breaking Grammy win as the youngest recipient of Best Traditional Pop Vocal album for her sophomore effort, Bewitched, the tour celebrated her highly anticipated third studio album A Matter of Time, marking a pivotal point in her discography: an inward reexamination of love through the lens of self-discovery. “I think it’s my most daunting project yet,” she tells Time magazine, “introspective and mature.” Known best for her delicate blend of classical jazz influence and contemporary storytelling, the Icelandic singer-songwriter promised concertgoers a whimsical night of storybook fantasy, an invitation to lose themselves in the magic of the evening.
Upon arrival, the audience was greeted with the grandeur of castle set pieces, a complete string quartet, and a timepiece-inspired B-stage, setting the scene for a performance that felt both enchanting and meticulously crafted. Opening the show with the dreamy “Clockwork,” Laufey sauntered on stage in a flowery princess-cut dress, accompanied by an entourage of showgirls twirling in sync to swing-time rhythms. The choreography, reminiscent of a miniature Rockettes performance, was as playful as it was elegant, complementing the ironic imagery interwoven throughout her music. She then moved into her contemplative rendition of “Lover Girl,” championing lyrics about the all consuming joy of being hopelessly in love. She then completed the showgirl set atop her castle swingset with “Dreamer,” a willful denouncement of feeling hopeless in love.
For the first act finale, Laufey dialed back the orchestra to perform the power ballad “Too Little, Too Late” at a grand piano. Hailing from a deeply musical family—her grandfather was head of strings at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, her grandmother a piano professor and her mother a violinist—and having trained as a classical cellist from the age of four before attending the prestigious Berklee College of Music4, Laufey honoured her eclectic musical background performing throughout the show on various instruments, she channeled her classical training and contemporary sensibilities into this wedding march inspired pop-rock arrangement.
Transitioning seamlessly to the clockwork-inspired B-stage, Laufey arrived in a flapper-inspired fringe dress, accompanied by an upright piano, stand-up bass and drum set. The stage screen glowed in black and white, displaying heart-shaped martini glasses. “Welcome to my jazz club,” Laufey greeted the audience through her vintage ribbon microphone. Immersed in a bygone world of velvety melodies and swinging rhythms, she sings songs off her 2022 debut album, Everything I Know About Love, rendered in sepia tones, embellished with a newfound old-timey musicality. Inviting the audience into the realm of bossa nova and blues, Laufey jitterbuged with a jazz sensibility to improvisational flourishes on the piano. Covering fan favourites like “Valentine,” “Fragile,” and “While You Were Sleeping,” Laufey brought together an intimate throwback set as timely as it was timeless.
As the jazz set faded into memory, the stage was transformed into a whimsical carousel. With twirling horses and a soft, lullaby melody, Laufey guided the audience from her cozy cabaret to a carnival setting. Dancers spun umbrellas adorned with carousel horses, creating the illusion of motion as the music shifted into the quirky “Cuckoo Ballet,” a musical interlude that fused classical en pointe ballet and contemporary dance elements. Drawing inspiration from the London Royal Ballet’s production of Cinderella, she told The GRAMMYs, “This anxiety of running away, of the ticking of the clock, spoke to me and spoke to my personal feelings about falling in love. It felt like the perfect place to work from.”
The fourth act opened with a comedic montage of Laufey trying on increasingly ridiculous costumes—a bee (“do you like jazz?”) and Snow White (“Laufey has been acting like such a princess lately”)— before finally emerging as the prince of her own fairytale to sing “Castle in Hollywood,” a song about the growing pains of drifting apart from friends, while riding the clockwise turning clockhand of the B stage. “Women have such a strong, deep empathy that it makes friend breakups, especially female friendships, really hard sometimes,” she says in an interview with Rolling Stone, “I wish them the best, but I’m also messed up for life because of it. It marked the end of my girlhood, so I just had to write about it.”
For her new album, Laufey challenged herself to be her most vulnerable self. This was highlighted by a staging that haunted her with five mirrors during the act’s penultimate song “Snow White.” Playing on the line “who is the fairest of them all,” she addressed her struggle with body dysmorphia and attempts to navigate her complex cultural identity through a waltz. In a sort of mirrored conversation to her encore performance “Letter to My 13 Year Old Self,” “Snow White” provided a darker, more cynical commentary about the unachievable nature of societal expectations. “We all have these impossible standards thrust upon us and we all have those moments where we feel like the way we look is way more important than how we speak or how we address people,” she told Times Magazine, “I think even women who aren’t in the industry can relate to that.”
Closing the evening, Laufey ends with her final act consisting solely of “Sabotage.” Carrying the thesis of the night and inspiring the album’s title, she sings to the fear of sabotaging something potentially beautiful, interpreting anxiety with instrumental disturbances and strobing lights.
Ultimately, Laufey’s concert stands as a vessel for profoundly contemporary feelings. In a masterclass of storytelling, she immerses the audience through a storybook of her own design, from castle to jazz club to carnival, only to reveal that every fantasy and fear is rooted in a real human truth. As the orchestra swelled and the credits rolled, the evening revealed itself as a heartfelt love letter to the cross-genre alchemy that made her: a symphony where classical jazz and modern pop intertwine in perfect, timeless harmony.
