Show Brain and the Ever-Evolving New York DIY Scene

Since leaving New York City two years ago to go to graduate school in North Carolina, one of the things I’ve missed most about the city is its breadth of concerts. Growing up in Brooklyn, I was spoiled when it came to live music—touring bands almost always stopped in New York, and local ones were a point of hometown pride. It’s never been uncommon for there to be at least three shows peaking my interest on any given night, each one just a short subway ride away and, likely, a cheap ticket. I ride for New York summers—as hot and disgusting as they are—partly because I always look forward to how the warmth turns the city’s public parks into some of the best music venues.

These days, when people discuss the “New York scene,” the names that come up tend to be artists associated with the “indie sleaze revival,” though calling it a “revival” seems inaccurate, given that “indie sleaze” wasn’t ever really a thing to begin with—the first documented use of the phrase was only three years ago, and it’s been use to refer to an amalgamation of occasionally overlapping, but essentially disparate, aesthetic and subcultural influences: bloghouse, electroclash, twee and the Meet Me in the Bathroom-era of alt-rock. The way it’s talked about in mainstream coverage, the so-called “New York scene” appears to be solely concentrated in Lower Manhattan and North Brooklyn; the most salient reason for this would be that the majority of venues where the associated acts tend to perform are in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Williamsburg and the Lower East Side. The Dare has become a poster boy for this—breaking out of the New York bubble and into the greater pop culture consciousness recently with high-profile collaborations with Charli xcx—and he’s flanked in the indie sleaze discussion by artists like Blaketheman1000 and Frost Children, who have also been credited with soundtracking the (arguably contrived) throwback to New York’s messier, more hedonistic days.

When it comes to the world of DIY, New York’s “scene” has always been a bit harder to define, because New York’s architectural and economic makeup tends to be less amenable to DIY venues. It’s hard to throw house shows when almost no one has a house. There’s also the city’s size, population density and longstanding status as the destination for artists who dream of “making it.” Thus, the “scene” in New York tends to vary based on where you are and who you know. In the years following the COVID-19 lockdown, the city’s local scene—however it’s defined—has been in a bit of an identity crisis. There are—and always have been—New York bands, but few of them sound like New York in the way that groups like the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio and Interpol did in the 2000s. Even the bands of my parents’ young adulthood in New York—Television, the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith Group—still sound like this city, albeit a version of it that I was born too late to ever experience firsthand. It all has a distinct yet unquantifiable “New Yorkness” to it.

This isn’t entirely exclusive to New York; part of it is a comment on an overall diminishing of regionality in American indie rock music. Because 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 especially locality-focused, like country and rap, are the few that seem to have remained immune to this. While the cities that have historically had thriving DIY punk and indie rock communities remain that way—ones like Philadelphia, Chicago and D.C.—most of their bands sound like they could be making music anywhere.

There are, of course, bands whose sound still feels like it captures that undefinable, inimitable New Yorkness. During my time back in the city this summer, I’ve been lucky enough to stumble into some shows that capture that energy in a live setting—thanks in large part to Show Brain, a grassroots nonprofit spearheaded by executive director Ozzie, who’s passionate about creating space for concerts and music festivals that showcase local talent in New York City. Because the shows are almost always free, all-ages and outdoors, there’s little to no barrier to entry, exposing audiences to artists they might not otherwise be familiar with and vice versa.