On the evening of Friday, Feb. 6, the temperature outside was hovering in the low teens. Yet I was quick to shed my layers inside Cambridge’s Middle East Club. The warmth radiated off the audience, and anticipation hung in the air. Upstairs, the concert had progressed to its main act. The band had taken the stage. Gabi Gamberg, the driving force behind said band, greeted the crowd with a smile.
Indie-rock band Daffo is, at its core, Gamberg; they are the sole throughline across every release. Their first EP — Crisis Kit — was released in 2021, when Gamberg was a student at Idyllwild Arts Academy in Southern California. After a musically disciplined childhood, they also studied at Berklee College of Music before attending NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Such a layered history in music theory is evident in Gamberg’s thoughtful lyricism and compositions, as later seen in their sophomore EP, Pest, released in 2023 while they were at NYU.
After a viral TikTok post earlier that same year (in which Gamberg performed “The Experiment,” a song later included on Pest) catapulted them to wider visibility, they were offered the opportunity to tour alongside Sir Chloe. A choice then presented itself: play it safe at a prestigious institution, or bet on momentum and dive head-first into the music — Gamberg chose the latter, and it has clearly paid off.
As they crossed the stage, the eyes of the audience followed. There was already an apparent familiarity between Daffo and the crowd. As a relatively niche indie artist, they have already cultivated a decent following, one that’s supportive without straying into the excesses of parasocial attachments. The fan community’s composition influenced the energy of the room: as the band wrestled with several technical issues before the first song, the audience replaced tension with patience. People talked to each other. The hum of gentle conversation was its own sort of music. And, once the first song began, the crowd was quick to pay attention.
The band sustained the room’s mellow ambience while Gamberg’s vocals lifted the songs above the instrumentals. Mellow yet laden with emotional weight, each lyric felt diaristic and deliberate. The introductory guitar strums to “Poor Madeline” were greeted with cheers from the audience — as their most popular song, people were more than ready to join Gamberg in singing the chorus.
Daffo’s music leans close to other indie bands like Big Thief, Soccer Mommy, and Snail Mail. The concert definitely invoked those influences, mirroring the echoey, grounded sound that I’d heard through my earbuds on the way to Cambridge. Instead of reworking the sound for the stage, Daffo leaned into the restraint, staying faithful to the original recordings without sounding redundant.
The crowd didn’t lean into any single uniform — instead, there was a mix of earth tones, moody reds, ripped tights and brown canvas jackets. “Seed” began with slow, melodic guitar plucking, easing into gentle vocals before erupting into fierce drumming, guitar and bass (played by Nick Wilkerson, Wyatt Charles Paris Kirschner and Matt Schuessler, respectively). The setlist transitioned into “Collector,” and heads in the audience nodded along, tangibly witnessing the tension in the lyrics dip and wane. As the concert neared its end, the obligatory encore halfway through, I found myself reflecting on what TikTok virality could do for a niche musician.
To put it simply, breaking through the attention economy is difficult. Those fortunate enough to be chosen by the algorithm have a chance to turn brief visibility into something more tangible — to not only share their art, but have it reverberate across a crowd in a dimly lit venue. Judging by the warmth in Cambridge, it’s clear that Daffo is on that route.
