The Downtown Music Festival, a two day whirlwind extravaganza featuring a wide selection of up-and-coming artists, touched down in the Lower East Side this past weekend. A diverse lineup had festival goers wandering back and forth between venues ranging from the go-to Mercury Lounge and The Bowery Ballroom to the blisteringly packed Cake Shop and Rockwood Music Hall. Over the course of 48 hours, a stark contrast of performances took place simultaneously, leaving fans with some major decisions. How do you choose between vastly different duos like Prince-obsessed brothers, Inc., or Canadian-based electronic musicians, Purity Ring? The answer usually came down to which venue happened to be closer.
One of the first acts to come onstage Friday night (May 12), was Andrew Wyatt of the famed indie pop band Miike Snow. Either due to timing or the unfortunate grandiose ballroom space that is Capitale—the show was only ever half-packed at best––despite the stage being crowded with a mini orchestra led by a hipster conductor sporting a grey baseball cap, in addition to Sean Lennon on guitar. At one point, a scraggly looking Wyatt shook his head and said to the crowd, “This is how you feel?” After gesturing to the crowd to try and rev them up, he launched into a strings-filled rearrangement of the hit “Animals,” which worked the crowd to some degree.
Despite the initial subdued affair, the night progressed rapidly when wandering over to catch boisterous bands like Palma Violets and Beach Fossils, who were much louder in every way. Playing to a packed Bowery Ballroom, the two sweaty frontmen of Palma Violets worked the enthusiastic crowd much more effectively, getting everyone to rock out with favorites like “Best of Friends” and to sing along, “I wanna be your best friend / I don’t want you to be my girl.” Having your fans storm the stage to end the show is generally a pretty good way to end the set as well. Over by Cake Shop, Beach Fossils performed with gusto in the much smaller setting, where rowdy fans were knocking into one another at the front. With the white Christmas lights hung over the small, cramped stage—the energy coming from band members like an amateur Andrew W.K. looking guitarist was palpable. One of the last acts of the night included the much hyped about indie alt-pop performer, Sky Ferreira. Laughing in an almost nervous-like manner in between songs when adoring shouts came her way proved opposite of her peroxide bleached hair thrashing persona while performing. Venturing outside in the rain after and witnessing cops on the corner of Ludlow and Stanton waiting around on horses and in police ponchos was a fitting way to end the first night.
The next night similarly got off to a slow start. Back at Cake Shop, PA-based band The Shackletons, played to a handful of people and made the tiny stage seem oddly a lot bigger than it was just 24 hours earlier. In an unintentionally hilarious move, the frontman knelt and poured a large bottle of Poland Spring over his head before transitioning into a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ song. Several blocks away at The Rockwood Music Hall, TEEN, an all-girl alt-rock band hailing from Brooklyn, performed to a packed, but passive crowd that seemed more into the drinking than the performance happening onstage.
Fortunately, pushing into the back room of Pianos led you into a more intoxicating and intimate space where you could bear witness to Autre Ne Veut, the moniker for an angst-ridden Arthur Ashin, filling the crammed room with his falsetto. The R&B, ambient vibe continued into the next set as well with inc. coming on stage. The brothers, Andrew and Daniel Aged, held a almost hypnotic spell over fans that didn’t seem to mind being pressed against each other in the modest-sized space. Warping genres that somehow veered from R&B to classic rock, if by some unlikely chance you weren’t into the music, just staring at Andrew Aged hair would have still kept you riveted (slicked hair parted in the middle tied into a knot on the back). Another anticipated musical act of the night was DIIV, a raucous surf/garage rock band with songs built around massive guitar riffs. With smoke billowing up from the crowd and the use of ski masks while singing, the Nirvana-inspired group and fans reveled in performances like “Air Conditioning” and “Sometime.”
New York was the first stop on the Downtown Music Fest’s list of US cities this year and with this past weekend’s lineup and overall great reception from concert-goers, one can only imagine what’s to come.
Review by Sandy Chung
