Olivia Rodrigo's Unraveled Tour leans hard into guitars in Columbus

Olivia Rodrigo brought her Unraveled Tour to Columbus, Ohio, on Thursday for the first of two shows at Ohio State University's Value City Arena. The run supports you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, released in June, and made the case that Rodrigo is as much a rock artist as a pop one.

The setlist was grouped by mood, which meant the evening opened with eight consecutive high-energy songs built on booming drums and walls of guitar distortion, a few of them edging toward the new wave textures of the new record. Pop-production trappings remained: multiple outfit changes, video interludes, a stage covered in fake flowers, and a climactic "the cure" on the auxiliary stage that ended with water pouring down on Rodrigo and washing one dress off to reveal another. There was no choreography and no lip syncing.

Rodrigo picked up instruments repeatedly through the night, mostly strumming guitar or playing piano chords, and tore into a Strokes-ish lead line at the peak of "maggots for brains," something she's been attempting at recent gigs. She also let white confetti stay in her hair for two songs after "honeybee" and performed her final three numbers with wet hair.

Older material still had a place. "traitor" felt a touch juvenile, while the SOUR deep cut "favorite crime" delivered one of the catalog's biggest climaxes, followed by "drivers license." The night closed with current single "expectations."

At the end of the show, Rodrigo put on a T-shirt supporting Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio, after telling the crowd that mailing in her ballot was the best part of her day. A voter registration table sat in the lobby. Her recent Daisy Chain Fields festival raised $20 million for women's rights organizations.