There is something so fun about a countercultural type of show. No festival stage, no production crew, no fog machine. Just Paz Lenchantin: bassist, violinist, pianist, singer, one of music’s most quietly gifted multi-instrumentalists, standing inside a record store, playing songs to a handful of people who had to physically show up to hear them. The Triste In-Store Tour, which wraps in Joshua Tree, CA, has been intimate, unhurried, and genuinely special.

The tour has been rolling through independent record stores across the country over recent weeks, celebrating Triste, Lenchantin’s debut solo album released last October on her own label, Hideous Human Records. For anyone who has only known her as a pillar of other people’s bands (the pulse beneath the Pixies, the low-end of A Perfect Circle, the steadying force in Zwan) these shows have been a revelation. This is Paz on her own terms, front and center, putting on an extraordinary multi-instrumental performance.

“I had to make this record on my own — not to prove anything, but just to have faith that music can nurture me back. And it did.” — PAZ LENCHANTIN, Rolling Stone

The album itself is unlike anything her résumé might suggest. Triste is a 12-track record that weaves Latin folk textures into American rock structures, built on piano and string arrangements rather than the distorted bass lines most fans associate with her name. Lenchantin played nearly all the instruments herself before enlisting former A Perfect Circle bandmates Josh Freese and Troy Van Leeuwen for select tracks.

The result, mixed by Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Twilight Sad), is fiercely personal: songs about faith, doubt, and self-discovery, written largely in Petatlán, Mexico, where she spent much of 2024 after her decade-long run with the Pixies came to a close.

The in-store format has suited the album perfectly. These songs hit in small, intimate rooms. They breathe and murmur. In the context of a record store, surrounded by album sleeves and that particular smell of old vinyl, they land with a warmth that no venue with a ticketing system could replicate. Paz herself is built for every venue, but has truly excelled in smaller environments where her talent fills a dark room like a bright light.

“I do love minimalism, and I honestly try to do that all the time. But I’m too complicated. My true self is way more complex.” — PAZ LENCHANTIN, The Creative Independent

On June 14th, Lenchantin takes the stage at the Rustic Theatre in Idyllwild, California, a show she is curating as well as headlining, joined by Dallas Acid, Escape-ism, and Crush. After the quietude of record stores, it promises to be something altogether more expansive: a proper theatrical evening in the pines, shaped by an artist who has spent her whole career shaping other people’s sounds and is only now, gloriously, shaping her own.

If the in-store shows are anything to go by, the Rustic Theatre has something to look forward to. Go and see her while the rooms are still this close.