St. Lucia play Emo’s Austin on Friday, August 21 — the last stop on a North American run that closes with a back-to-back Texas pair: the Granada Theater in Dallas on the 20th, Emo’s on the 21st to finish the whole thing. This tour has been running an unusual format all summer: two complete sets every night, no opener, no support act. The NYC-based husband-and-wife duo Jean-Philip Grobler and Patti Beranek have a deep enough catalog to pull it off. Whether Austin audiences know that is another question, but a Friday closer on a summer tour has a way of settling the matter.
About St. Lucia
Grobler is South Africa-born; Beranek is Germany-born; both have been operating out of New York and building St. Lucia around 80s-inspired synth-pop with considerably more range underneath it than that shorthand implies. The “Two Sets, No Opener” format is a direct response to Fata Morgana, the double album they released in halves — Dawn in March 2025, Dusk on December 5, 2025. The Dusk half in particular pulls from ELO, David Bowie, The Beatles, and Ennio Morricone, pushing well past the clean electro-pop of earlier records. Their debut When the Night charted on the Billboard Top 200 and hit #6 on Heatseekers. Hyperion, their third record, drew “buoyant” from Billboard and “revelatory” from PopMatters. Matter produced “Dancing on Glass,” still a floor-mover. Recent sets this summer have drawn from across the catalog — “Something’s In The Way,” “Full Moon Rising,” “Elevate,” “Dancing on Glass” — across two full acts and an encore.
Grobler on the Fata Morgana project: “In a way, this is my personal rebellion against the darkness.” That reads differently on a tour’s last night.
About the Venue
Emo’s Austin is at 2015 E Riverside Dr — a 1,700-capacity floor-and-stage club that occupies a reliable slot in the middle tier of Austin’s touring circuit. Big enough for the crowd a show like this should draw; contained enough that a two-set format with no warm-up act doesn’t dissipate before the second set gets going. For more Austin concerts, the full calendar is current.
Tickets & Show Info
Doors at 7:00 PM on Friday, August 21, 2026. St. Lucia are on Nettwerk Records. This is the final date of the “An Evening With St. Lucia” North American leg — there is no second Austin stop on the current schedule. Tickets are available via the link below.