Bands in the sand: 4 acts to catch at the Unamplified Barbeque
Crashing waves, meet crashing waves of sound
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Every year for the past few years, the DIY promoter Todd P has organized a summer concert called the Unamplified Acoustic Barbeque (to be held this year on June 14 at Fort Tilden Beach in Queens). It’s a laid-back affair involving lots of blankets and easy camaraderie, but it’s also a fairly spectacular musical showcase, with every band that’s ever appeared in a Bushwick basement showing up to play short acoustic sets among friends and fans. It’s great, but the number of bands can get a little overwhelming. A quick peek at this year’s lineup reveals almost 50 bands, with some big players in the scene—Real Estate, Ponytail, Mika Miko, Knyfe Hyts—sharing the sand with all manner of up-and-comers. As the barbeque's tentative schedule was just released today, Decider presents four bands you may not have heard of, but are most definitely worth checking out.
Teengirl Fantasy
Teengirl Fantasy's star has been on the rise for some time now, ever since a series of concerts last summer established the group's skill at mixing bouncy dance music with hacked electronics. The duo—both members of which are still in college in Ohio, and thus on summer break—should find it a considerable challenge to replicate their music without an electrical outlet, which only makes their performance at the Unamplified Barbeque that much more intriguing.
Little Gold
A band that’s making earnest folk for people who usually take their basement shows fast and noisy, Little Gold won’t have to work too hard at adjusting its sound for the beach. That’s a good thing, too, because the band’s spare arrangements and alt-country leanings—more than one song sounds like The Old 97's on Valium—make perfect sense against a backdrop of rolling waves, and the songs’ lyrics are plenty evocative as well. “I loved New York in the early 1970s,” sings Christian DeRoeck in “My Side Of The Bed.” “Although I wasn’t born, I saw it in the movies.” He's not the only one.
Fiasco
Fiasco’s proggy, disjointed metal teeters on the brink of chaos, but always finds its way back to intricate arrangements that call to mind bands like Battles. Despite the members’ clear chops—and in the case of bassist Lucian Buscemi, a solid artistic pedigree (he's Steve's son)—Fiasco isn’t interested in showboating. They’re more interested in rocking faces, which makes it all the more interesting to speculate how a frenetic, extremely loud band will translate their songs into acoustic campfire ditties.
Aa (“BIG A little a” for web-search purposes)
The name, the dissonance, and the barely-there song structures of Brooklyn-based Aa convey an air of detached experimentalism (and make evident an abiding love for the Boredoms). Songs sound like ancient rituals reconfigured for the new millennium: Guttural shouts smash into dirty keyboards; relentless, thumping drums—think Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead—meet wobbly electronics; found sounds find themselves lost in a haze of feedback. It’s unclear what these guys will do for their acoustic performance, but it will probably defy the few expectations that anyone could possibly have for them.
