Slayyyter brings ‘something for real’ to Emo’s  

Organs sound beneath a hymn as a sea of fans in trucker hats and cutoff jeans wait with bated breath for pop music’s brash new breakout to take a stage, fit with birthday decorations and a glittering crucifix. Catherine Grace Garner is about to send her rabid audience into a 90-minute frenzy, but first, a prayer.

“Lord, grant that I may seek to comfort rather than be comforted,” Garner’s voiceover said. “To understand rather than be understood / To love than be loved / For it is by self-forgetting that one finds / It is by forgiving that one is forgiven / It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.”

So began the Austin stop of the “WOR$T GIRL IN THE WORLD TOUR” at Emo’s, a delirious set grounded in the artistic rebirth that made Garner, known onstage as Slayyyter, the biggest new story in pop music in 2026. When she played an afternoon Austin City Limits set in 2022, the St. Louis-born singer was still making disco-adjacent dance pop with visions of becoming a glamorous popstar. Her Thursday night performance, however, brought gritty punk energy thanks to a setlist featuring nearly every song from WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. 

The album, initially planned to be Garner’s last before a viral daytime Coachella set sent singles like “DANCE…” into the stratosphere, scrubbed the sheen from her sound in favor of a grimy celebration of aughts-era sleaze à la Britney Spears’ “Blackout.” As Garner strutted up and down the stage in red leather and denim and defiantly flipped her waist-length wavy blonde hair, she did so with a powerful air befitting her overwhelming new sound — and obvious new confidence.

A live band lent Garner’s rave-ready bangers rock ‘n’ roll heft, an immediacy especially pronounced on guitar-forward “CANNIBALISM!” and unhinged industrial freakout “BROKE BITCH FREE$TYLE.” Her guitarist ripped into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” as Garner, who turned 30 on Thursday, received a cake and a serenade from the crowd.

An Austin classic earned a shoutout during the throbbing hedonism anthem “CRANK,” whose lyrics feature multiple nods to Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused.”

“He wanna fuck Slayyyter, Richard, we should link later … my eyes go blind, my mind is fine, it’s uh, alright, alright, alright,” sang Garner, whose stage name is a Tumblr-era adaptation of Slater, the film’s iconic stoner conspiracy theorist. 

Hellish red lights gave the moments before the show’s final act a sinister glow. Garner returned to the stage in a ruffly white bodysuit for a finale that kicked into gear with “brand new chanel$,” the uncharacteristically euphoric lead single to WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA’s forthcoming companion album, tentatively titled Wor$t Man In America. 

Garner ended the show with “BEAT UP CHANEL$,” the thrashing, entrancing 2025 single that kicked off her transformation. A fitting rejection of materialism in a city rapidly losing the outsider ethos it could once claim, “BEAT UP CHANEL$” balanced depth and electricity during a climax that bottled everything that makes Garner remarkable.

“I want beat-up Chanels,” Garner raged. “I want something for real.”

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