Review written 2/18/16
Cake Shop is one of my favorite venues in Manhattan. On the first floor, it appears to be like any other brunch bar in the Lower East Side, but downstairs where the bands play, it looks like a burlesque dive. The space is tiny, dark and dusty and the stage looks like it was lifted from a high school prom around 1980. The bar has a nice whiskey selection and the music is usually well worth the cover. Some of the bigger names that have played here include Warpaint, the Dirty Projectors, and Spoon.
The first band on the bill tonight is Sly Moth, a local pop punk quartet whose punk side leans to the grungier aspects of the genre, reminiscent of bands like Bratmobile and Bikini Kill. In fact, singer Dani Newman has the same intense, childlike tone as Kathleen Hanna. But the real attention grabber from the start in this outfit is drummer Jonathan Levy, whose incendiary playing is the true source of power in Sly Moth. Levy moves his arms like an orchestra conductor as he plays, pounding out beats with passionate precision and maintaining a wellspring of energy throughout the set. Bassist Xiao Mei Hu looks zoned out in her corner of the stage as she slays tuneful melodies usually expected from the guitarist. Hu picks carefree pop lines charged with determination, not unlike Jenny Lewis’s bass playing in certain Rilo Kiley songs. Sly Moth’s diverse sound is frosted with reverberating psychedelic interludes from guitarist Stephen Ericson, giving them a softening touch of acid rock that makes their sound cohesive.
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| Sly Moth, From left to right: Xiao Mei Hu, Jonathan Levy, Dani Newman, Stephen Ericson |
I came to Cake Shop tonight specifically to see the second band, all boy/all girl, because I bought their first EP, Trophy, last week and I’ve listened to it almost every day since. Usually a seven-piece ensemble, tonight is a special stripped-down set with only five members. In trying to define their experimental pop sound, I arrive at the conclusion that they have turned rock opera into a legitimate genre. Delicate schoolgirl harmonies sung by Danielle Lovier and Jessie Rogowski are juxtaposed against gritty lyrics and a heavy electric bass. Lovier manages to coax angst out of her ukulele, and the whole band dances and sways exuberantly throughout the show. All boy/all girl has the carnival theatrics of groups like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and the sweet, bubbly flavor of 60s girl groups. Their sound gets sharper and denser as the set goes on, and their explosive rendition of “Glitter” brings the house down. The magnitude of so many rapidly played strings combined with Joey Campanella’s formidable drums creates a wall of sound so thick that when Lovier’s lilt transforms into an electrifying banshee wail, it sounds like the trumpets of Jericho. Their style oscillates between indie-acoustic and folk-spiked electric pop for most of the set, always in the campy vein of musical theatre. Lovier and Rogowski are radiant performers who know how to capture an audience.
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| all boy/all girl, from left to right: Josh Curry, Joey Campanella, Jessie Rogowski, Danielle Lovier, Nick Rahn |
The third band of the night is How Sad, a dance music group from Montreal, and they set the stage with so many keyboards, it looks like a music shop. The abundance of instruments and players makes it nearly impossible to tell where any sound onstage is coming from. The creation of mesmerizing bandleader Harris, How Sad gets the room moving with meticulously synchronized layers of simple beats and universal melodies that weave together and result in unique and danceable numbers. Some of the songs sound like they belong on the soundtrack to any John Hughes film, and some, like “Hot Blur,” are summer anthems that beg to be played at a music festival. This is unapologetic, celebratory pop, and proof that the musical virtues of the 1980s are still alive and well.
The last band on the bill is Nashville-based Keeps, an ambient rock outfit consisting of three guitarists and a drummer. Keeps traverses dreamy planes of adagio riffs and frenetic war zones thick with metallic vibrations. Oily licks on top of electropop beats give the music a timeless quality that mixes some of rock’s best features from several decades and different subgeneres. While Keeps is a well-rehearsed group and enjoyable to listen to, they don’t have the same versatility as the groups that came before them tonight. It’s hard to tell one song from the next, and they come off a little one note, albeit, a good note.
Before leaving Cake Shop, I catch Danielle Lovier of all boy/all girl and ask if she would be down to do an interview for Hydrogen Jukebox, since their set was such a blast to experience. Below is our interview, conducted over email and edited only for grammar.
HJ: Tell me a little about the formation of all boy/all girl. I know it started with you and double bassist, Nicholas Rahn. How did the rest of the ensemble come together?
DL: Nick and I made some demos and put up an ad on Craigslist and found Jessie and our viola player, Hannah. We found a few others, but over the years we've switched out some key players. Josh is one of Nick's childhood best friends. Joey we found through a mutual friend and Susan came recommended from our last cellist.
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| Press photo by Ali Brant, courtesy of the band |
HJ: Can you tell me a little about your songwriting process? Your compositions seem to have more in common with what’s on Broadway than in Bushwick.
DL: Nick is the main songwriter/arranger. We live together so I help shape the songs from their infancy (mostly just saying no until I like it). Usually we make a demo and send out sheet music to the rest of the band. At rehearsal, we flesh it out a little more and people add their own twists on the existing parts.
HJ: Your sets are really fully-fledged performances! Do you have background in theatre, or formal training in any of the performing arts?
DL: You caught me. I was a musical theatre major at UArts in Philly.
HJ: Your music is very vocally demanding. How long do you warm up before a show? Do you follow any particular warm up technique? How do you care for your voice between shows and practices?
DL: I wish I was better about this. Usually on the day of a show, I'll have sang through the set list and I try to remember to do some sirens.
HJ: As an artist, what are your favorite platforms to sell your music? i.e. iTunes, BandCamp, etc.
DL: We've made our music available on pretty much every possible digital platform. That being said, we believe strongly in physical media. We prefer people buy a cassette, CD, or vinyl. For our digital downloads on our last EP 'Trophy', we handmade little trophies that had a scroll in it with a redeem code.
HJ: You’ve toured extensively, in the U.S and abroad. Tell me about your craziest experience!
DL: We played a music festival in a small town in the Netherlands called Westerwijtwerd. I think the population is 100. I'm pretty sure every single person that lived there came to see us. Apparently, the last American musician who had played there was Bob Dylan. It was so much fun and we really felt like super stars.
HJ: I don’t see any upcoming shows on your calendar. Are you heading back to the studio? What’s next?
DL: We actually just got back on Sunday from recording a full length album at Machines with Magnets in Rhode Island. We're super happy with how it turned out and can't wait to release it, but we're now recovering after a few exhausting weeks. We probably won't play another show until early spring.
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I hope I can catch all boy/all girl's next show, whenever that may be, because their set at Cake Shop was such a good time. In the meanwhile, give this song a listen, and check out their latest music here!
HJ
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