Review: Shy Hunters @ Baby’s All Right (1/10)
A soft launch in more ways than one, last Friday gave Brooklyn a taste of an emergent venue and a newish musical talent that may soon be vying for national attention. At Baby’s All Right, an unexpectedly swanky, two-month-old South Williamsburg locale, the dining room was premiering its wares in an unofficial capacity. In the performance space beyond the decadent hieroglyphic bar motif, local natives Shy Hunters were taking the stage just weeks before the release of their debut album, O That I Had Wings (out April 8).
Comprised of Indigo Street, Sam Levin, and Nick Jozwiak, Shy Hunters is your friendly neighborhood dissociative pill. You could think of it as dream pop or a wavelength that’s sort of euphoric and dystopic at the same time. Overtures to David Lynch, as they say, manifest as deliberately distancing hesitations in an otherwise fluid soundtrack.
If there’s an impression to be made, it’s certainly a subtle one, and not everyone will leave with a definite sense of what it was. That’s not to say they didn’t have the room’s undivided attention. There’s something for everyone when you combine beautiful noise with complicated elements and manage to keep the intelligence quotient high. Most notable is Indigo’s searing, wispy voice, which seems to come from afar atop several layers of fluttery, meandering instrumentals.
If anything, the band’s moniker — clearly a reference to novelist Tom Spanbauer’s In the City of Shy Hunters — sets the tone for what they deliver. With a sparse, persistent beat and a tendency toward the background, it’s music that knows it’s sneaking up on you well before you realize it.
Review by Steph Koyfman.
