BY Julian Coyle ForstPublished Aug 17, 2026
Philadelphia, PA's Greg Mendez has been in the game a while. He began releasing his intimate take on stripped-down indie pop with 2016's Phone Records after years as a local DIY scene regular. But it was on his 2023 self-titled LP that Mendez made a name for himself, breaking through to semi-mainstream recognition.
The album was tender and intensely melodic, perhaps the best showing of the classic solo singer-songwriter archetype since Elliott Smith's posthumous New Moon. This May, Mendez followed it up with Beauty Land, a sprawling 14-track LP that sees him supplementing sparse arrangements with droning electric organs. On Sunday (August 16), Mendez played Vancouver's Biltmore Cabaret on the West Coast leg of his tour in support of the album.
The Biltmore is a good fit for quiet artists like Mendez, with its two-foot stage positioning artists just high enough to be seen above the crowd but maintaining a sense of informal intimacy. Maria BC — a California-based ambient artist who released their latest LP, Rare, in February — opened the show with an electric guitar, a set of droning backing tracks, and a lineup of effects pedals.
Their music is dreamy without sacrificing rhythm; simple chord progressions led by confident vocals that outline the contours of each song. The backing tracks worked, but it was difficult not to imagine the heft Maria's songs would carry were they instead supported by a full band.
That's not the case for Mendez, who took the stage in workman's boots, black jeans and a T-shirt. Many of the singer-songwriter's studio recordings feature other instrumentation supporting his guitar, and nearly all are backed by drums, but Mendez's live show doesn't hurt for their absence. The spareness of his setup — microphone, steel-string acoustic guitar, a small electric keyboard and a set of effects pedals — instead narrows focus onto the strength of his songwriting and guitar-playing.
Mendez is the kind of musician whose fans record his fingers as he plays. That's not to minimize the quality of his keyboard-led tracks, which lean into ambient drone while maintaining his signature melodic style, but the guitar is the star of the show.
The singer-songwriter is just as comfortable hammering out simple progressions as he is configuring intricate fingerstyle melodies with complex chord transitions. Mendez played an unreleased song that was a highlight for the way it built naturally from the latter to the former, maintaining a melodic through-line as it rose in rhythm and volume to a finale that was as heavy as one can hope for from an acoustic.
Mendez focused his set on newer material — mostly from self-titled and Beauty Land — but happily dipped into older tracks like "Bike," "Freak" and "Donut Shop" when the crowd requested them. He was reserved on stage, occasionally thanking the audience and smiling sheepishly when he flubbed a chord.
There's a special kind of magic seeing Mendez play, feeling the love, the pain and beauty in his music hum between you like a live wire. He doesn't bring much onto the stage — but when he leaves, there's something there that wasn't before.
