Sixpence None the Richer
The Church Studio
July 12, 2025
When Sixpence None the Richer went into a replicant performance of their nigh unavoidable 1998 song “Kiss Me” at the Church Studio last Saturday night, I felt a full-body flush of nostalgic joy, remembering the radio and all the other places this song spoke to us: the movie She’s All That, the soundtrack to Dawson’s Creek, and even a BBC broadcast of a royal wedding, if you’re into that sort of thing. I spent the late 1990s glued to pop radio, and whenever I hear even a whiff of any hit single of that era, my brain cells realign to my early teenage self. In my head, I can replay every instrumental solo and errant “yeah” or “whoa” from every hit song from that year.
It’s barely possible for a band to imbue itself into the DNA of the entire culture anymore, so it’s something special to recall a time when it was, and because of this, I absolutely understand the trend of ‘90s band reunions and reconsuming art that used to make you happy to see if it still does. I’m not the only one: “Kiss Me” went triple platinum in 2024, a year before K-Pop behemoth Lisa of Blackpink interpolated portions of the song for her single “Moonlit Floor.” As of writing, that song has 340 million streams on Spotify alone. Lisa was born in 1997. All this to say, I don’t reflexively have a “THAT band is still together?” reaction when I see someone coming through Oklahoma: Counting Crows will be here in August. Wilson Phillips will be at Hard Rock in September. Nelly is here all the time.
Even without all that context, I was excited to be offered the chance to review a Sixpence show, because I legitimately liked this band, the hits and also the entire self-titled album that housed “Kiss Me.” With its heavy orchestration and fairytale imagery, it was kind of a gentle, bookish (the band name is a C.S. Lewis reference) answer to alternative rock radio.
Sixpence tour opener Alex Wong played a brief acoustic set of earnest originals in the lobby an hour before the show as ticketholders filtered into the building, which was stiflingly hot in places. A pre-show email message warned about the loss of one of the building’s HVAC compressors the day prior, and most spaces outside of the Live Room, including the lobby, were (barely) cooled by fans. Wong sweated it out and won over a couple dozen people, who lingered in the entry and listened intently. The heat isn’t anyone’s fault but Oklahoma’s, and everyone seemed to handle it with good spirits figuratively and literally, in the form of a free glass of champagne handed to them at the door. It’s worth pointing out that the Church offered a $70 ticket level for a “lounge listening experience” where the buyer would be in the building for the show but not in the same room as the band. I do not know if anyone participated in this, or if the lounge was appropriately temperate.
Ticketholders could spend the pre-show minutes in the museum room with a catering table of small bites and music artifacts, and then a few minutes before showtime, Church staff and volunteers ushered us through the basement bar into the Live Room. Studio employees took the mic for a brief history lesson about the Studio, including that it’s now a 501(c)(3), and roped everyone into content creation, asking permission to take a cell phone video of the crowd and instructing people to kiss during “Kiss Me” so they could take more video later on.
Before starting the set, vocalist Leigh Nash warned the crowd that they are in fact a rock band and apologized for the volume to come. At one point later in the evening, she asked if anyone had spare earplugs because she noticed someone’s audial discomfort in the first few rows, dubbed the VIP seating. Even in the last row, the drumming was oppressively loud at times. The show was designed for much larger rooms (like OKC’s Tower Theatre, where Sixpence played the following night).