Since leaving New York City two years ago to pursue graduate school in North Carolina, one of the things I’ve missed most about the city is its wide variety of concert offerings. Growing up in Brooklyn, I was spoiled when it came to live music—touring bands almost always stopped in New York, and local bands were a source of hometown pride. It was never unusual for at least three shows to pique my interest on any given night, each just a short subway ride away and likely with a cheap ticket. I endure New York City summers—hot and icky as they are—in part because I always look forward to the way the warmth transforms the city’s public parks into some of the best music venues.
When people talk about the “New York scene” these days, they usually mention names of artists associated with the “indie sleaze revival,” although the term “revival” seems inaccurate, since “indie sleaze” never really existed—the first documented use of the term dates back only three years, and describes a mixture of occasionally overlapping but essentially disparate aesthetic and subcultural influences: bloghouse, electroclash, twee, and the Meet me in the bathroom-era of alternative rock. As it’s talked about in mainstream media, the so-called “New York scene” seems to be concentrated exclusively in Lower Manhattan and North Brooklyn; the most glaring reason for this is that most of the venues where the acts in question play are in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side. The Dare has become the poster child for this – having recently broken out of the New York bubble and into the larger pop culture consciousness with high-profile collaborations with Charli xcx – and he’s flanked in the indie sleaze discussion by artists like Blaketheman1000 and Frost Children, who also soundtrack the (presumably contrived) look back at New York’s chaotic, more hedonistic days.
When it comes to the world of DIY, the New York “scene” has always been a little harder to define, as New York’s architectural and economic structure is less conducive to DIY venues. It’s hard to host house concerts when almost nobody has a house. Add to that the city’s size, its population density, and its longstanding status as a destination for artists who dream of “making it.” As such, the “scene” in New York tends to vary depending on where you are and who you know. In the years following the COVID-19 lockdown, the city’s local scene—however defined—has been in something of an identity crisis. There are—and always have been—New York bands, but few of them sound like New York, the way groups like the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio and Interpol did in the 2000s. Even the bands from my parents’ New York youth – Television, Velvet Underground and Patti Smith Group – still sound like that city, albeit a version of it that I was born too late to ever experience for myself. There’s a distinct but unquantifiable “New Yorkness” to everything.
This isn’t exclusive to New York; in part, it’s a commentary on a general decline in regionalism in American indie rock music. As streaming has fundamentally changed the way people make, share, discover, and promote music, it has in many ways decentralized (and delocalized) various genres of music—certain genres that are particularly locally focused, like country and rap, are the few that seem to have remained immune to this. While the cities that historically had thriving DIY punk and indie rock communities continue to do so—cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and DC—most of their bands sound like they could make music everywhere.
Of course, there are also bands whose sound still captures that indefinable, inimitable New York vibe. During my time in the city this summer, I was lucky enough to come across a few shows that capture that energy in a live setting—thanks in large part to Show Brain, a grassroots nonprofit led by executive director Ozzie who is passionate about creating space for concerts and music festivals that showcase local talent in New York City. Because the shows are almost always free, appropriate for all ages, and held outdoors, there are little to no barriers to entry, giving audiences exposure to artists they might not otherwise know, and vice versa.
Over the past two years, Show Brain has built a rotating lineup of regulars who have helped develop the sonic culture of its shows—bands like masked punks Balaclava, freak-folk trio Pinc Louds, no-wave absurdists Pop Music Fever Dream, and psychedelic fuzz-funk group Skorts, all of whom were on the lineup of the two-day Show Brain Festival, held this year on August 10 and 11 in Tompkins Square Park, a celebration of “the best that Show Brain has to offer.” With the help of these and similar groups, Show Brain has become something of an unofficial music collective, with each live event a sampler of the best that New York’s underground world has to offer.
Show Brain is a DIY operation through and through. Everyone who helped organize the weekend’s festivities was there because they wanted to be. Ozzie made a point to praise his sound engineering team of Eddie Guzman and Alex Amini (who skate-punk band Native Sun thanked for having “the best sound of any outdoor setup”), as well as videographer Katie Oliver, stage performer Melyna Gierard and the general on-site support staff. “They’re just in the business of bringing good rock music to New York City,” said PMFD singer Tim Seeberger of the Show Brain crew. This happened between onstage antics like running around Tompkins Square mid-song, sharing a cigarette with her bandmates (also mid-song), and, in one of the weirdest polite mosh calls I’ve ever heard, telling the crowd to “be irreverent and disrespectful, but in a kind way” – which was the spirit of pretty much the entire festival.
On the first day, members of Balaclava sweated through their colorful ski masks as they riled up the crowd with their cacophonous shredding and stage acrobatics. Dance-happy punks 95 Bulls took it even further, jumping fences and kicking over equipment, nearly injuring themselves in several places during their wild performance but still grinning with each fall as the crowd danced along. The next day’s acts kept the energy high – Pons with their ear-splitting percussion, Pinc Louds with their wonderfully unpredictable live sound collages, PMFD with their eerie post-punk musings on internet culture and capitalist surrealism, and Skorts with their psychgaze styling, which closed out the weekend. “This is community.” “They’re creating something that’s fucking real,” said Danny Gomez, lead singer and guitarist of Native Sun, at the end of the group’s wild lunchtime set of politically charged melodic hardcore.
When you look at the crowd of all ages that kept the park packed and constantly moving all weekend in the August heat, when you see the members of the other bands below them, and hear the sound of the city blaring from the speakers as each band takes the stage, those words ring true. The bands associated with the Show Brain lineups can’t even begin to capture the current state of the local scene in New York, but they offer a microcosm of some of the best and brightest artists still under the radar, defining the city’s DIY music ecosystem in their own ways.
Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York, currently living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work has appeared in The Alternative, Merry-Go-Round Magazine, Post-Trash, Swim Into The Sound and her newsletter “mostly about music”, Our band could be your woman.
