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.

Over the past two years, Show Brain has cultivated a rotating lineup of regulars who’ve helped develop the sonic culture of their 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 in Tompkins Square Park on the 10th and 11th of August this year, a celebration of “some of the finest Show Brain has to offer.” With the help of these groups and others like them, Show Brain has become something of an unofficial music collective, each live event a sampler of the best New York’s underground has to offer.

Show Brain is a DIY operation, through and through. Everyone working to put on the weekend’s festivities was there because they wanted to be. Ozzie made a point to shout-out 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 artist Melyna Gierard and general on-site support staff. “They’re just in the game to bring good rock music to New York City,” said PMFD lead singer Tim Seeberger of the Show Brain crew. This was between onstage antics like running a lap around Tompkins Square mid-song, sharing a cigarette with their bandmates (also mid-song) and, in what was one of the most oddly polite mosh calls I’ve ever heard, asking the audience to “get disrespectful and irreverent, but in a kind way”—as was the spirit of pretty much the entire festival.

On the first day, the members of Balaclava sweat through their brightly-colored ski masks as they riled up the crowd with their cacophonous shredding and onstage acrobatics. Dance-friendly punks 95 Bulls took this even further, hopping fences and kicking over equipment, nearly injuring themselves in the process at various points in their raucous set but still grinning through each shit-eating tumble as the audience danced along. The next day’s acts kept up the energy—Pons with their eardrum-pounding percussion, Pinc Louds with their deliriously unpredictable live sound collaging, PMFD with their uncanny post-punk musings on internet culture and capitalist surrealism and Skorts with their psychgaze stylings that closed out the weekend. “This is community. They’re creating something that’s fucking real,” said Native Sun lead vocalist and guitarist Danny Gomez at the end of the group’s rowdy midday set of politically-charged melodic hardcore.

Looking around at the all-ages crowd who’d kept the park packed and consistently moving all weekend in the August heat, seeing members of the other bands among them and hearing the sound of the city bleed through the speakers as each band took the stage—these words rang true. The bands affiliated with Show Brain lineups can’t even begin to encompass the current state of New York’s local scene, but they offer a microcosm of some of its best and brightest under-the-radar artists who are defining the city’s DIY music ecosystem on their own terms.

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York, currently based in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work has appeared in The Alternative, Merry-Go-Round Magazine, Post-Trash, Swim Into The Sound and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.