Checking In: The New Colossus Festival (New York)

New York’s indie music festival The New Colossus took over lower Manhattan earlier this month. Spread over eight venues across the city’s East Village and Lower East Side, the lineup featured more than 150 independent artists. That’s in addition to daytime panels from music distribution platform Ditto Music on publishing, touring, Spotify for Artists, Chartmetric, and more.

Its fifth edition had everything from psych rock to electronic punk. We connected with some of our favorite performers to talk songwriting, gear, and festival highlights.

flirting. (@actualflirting)

Tell us about a highlight of the event…Dedstrange party at Berlin! Absolutely huge lineup, energy in room was insane. Particularly seeing Pop Music Fever Dream. We climbed on the bar and they climbed up the pillar, it’s a great way to make friends.
How would you describe your sound? You know that feeling when you have a dream but you're not quite sure if its a nightmare or a good one? Take that and drown it in noise and you're close.
How do you feel when you’re onstage?
Jim: Noisy and overly confident
Kevin: Honestly can't remember much afterwards. Let the sound vibrations carry me around.
Poppy: It’s like therapy, but people are watching!
William: Palpitations…
Who’s your dream collaboration?
Poppy: Bjork
Kevin: Currently, Kim Gordon. New album is inspiring
Poppy: Actually yes, I second that
William: Charli XCX… Rosaliá
Jim: tbh agree with all of these
What’s your favorite song to perform live? “Bitter,” the last song in our set. One of our earliest songs still in our set. If you’ve seen us you’ll know why :-)

Note from the band: We don’t currently have any new music out, though this will be incoming this year. In lieu of this, we’d like to share some links to show solidarity with Palestine and highlight a small number of campaigns/groups, though this is by no means exhaustive!
https://www.map.org.uk
https://palestinecampaign.org
https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/raversforpalestine?igsh=aTBpNWdjNTh3ZHJz

Slash Need (@slashneed)

Homebase: Toronto, Canada
How would you describe The New Colossus Festival? Rowdy, loud, wet. A very good time.
How would you describe your sound? Same as above.
Who are some of your musical influences? For me, Skinny Puppy, early Ministry, Deli Girls, Geneva Jacuzzi, Peaches of course. Beyond that so many of our friends in Toronto and Montreal have influenced us. Pelada, Backxwash, Manmadehill, New Chance, Moon King to name just a few.
Best spot to watch a Slash Need show? Under cover of darkness.
Do you have any pre-show rituals? Usually doing my makeup. A few howls at the moon for good measure.

Listen to Slash Need’s rendition of the 1989 Fang classic “The Money Will Roll Right In” on Spotify.

Mr Floyd Larry (@mrfloydlarry)

Homebase: Miami, FL
Tell us about a highlight of the event…Standing in front of the crowd and seeing just the sea of people in front of me, it’s an unreal feeling. Definitely a fun time.
What’s your songwriting process? When I write music, I just view it as journaling. I don’t really think too much. I just play whichever instrument I feel represents how I feel in the moment. Whether it be the bass or the guitar. So at the end of the day, the music really just writes itself.
Who are some of your musical influences? I kind of pull inspiration from everyone I listen to, but my main inspirations are DIIV, Beach Fossils, and Cocteau Twins.
Fav piece of gear? Probably either my bass or my chromatic tuner because the tuner is literally what saves me.
Did you catch any other bands at the festival? If so, any standouts? Yeah, I caught a lot of other bands at the festival! A few that stood out to me were Oceans, Sugar for the Pill, Cucamaras, and Melody Fields was a really good one.

Listen to Mr Floyd Larry’s single “I Don’t Wanna Hide” on Spotify.

Sham Family (@shamfamilyshamfamily)

Homebase: Toronto for the most part. We’ve all lived in the city for the better half of a decade. We’ve been building a barn studio out in the country for a while now, so, musically speaking, that’s the new homebase.
How would you describe your sound? Music for adult babies. Just kidding. 5 people will appreciate that joke. It’s noisy and loud, usually fast. With writing/recording, we tend to explore more areas, scratch more itches. Live is more of a catharsis, the louder the better.
Highlight of the event? There were plenty of great shows. 2 that stood out were UK acts, Flirting and Minas. We were fortunate to play after them on separate shows. No better hype than watching someone beat a microphone into their head, or climb up onto the bar to scream, before you go up to play.
Fav piece of gear? Without a shadow of a doubt it has to be the cajon. We’re constantly in need of firewood.
Do you have any pre-show rituals? Grab 4 beers but get them before the band ends, so that the line isn’t too long and you’re late to get on stage. That’s an important one and difficult to master. Other than that just the standard anxiety-inducing puke and shit.
Best spot to watch a Sham Family show? THPS2 - Hangar

Listen to Sham Family’s new single “Modern Myth” on Spotify.

CURRLS (@currlsband)

Homebase: We’re all currently based in Brighton. It’s where Currls started back in 2017 and we have such a supportive music scene here. It’s allowed us to grow so much over the years.
What does music mean to you? It’s everything. It’s the thing I think about all day long, night and day. This world wouldn’t have its soul without it and you can learn so much from it. It’s saved me time and time again and still does.
What’s your songwriting process? I usually like to be sat on the floor with my silly little notebook, laptop, guitar, mini keyboard and Logic loaded up. I’ll just play around with random ideas until it feels good and then write as I go. Sometimes it can take forever and other times it will happen so easily. I like to write poetry and then connect the musical dots after. My notes on my iPhone are a bit of a minefield!
How would you describe The New Colossus Festival? This festival feels so grassroots and special. It was so great to see all the different types of bands gracing these legendary local venues around the Lower East Side. The crowd we had at the show we did at Baker Falls was so much fun, everyone was in such good spirits. We’d love to play it again and do even more shows.
What’s your favorite song to perform live? It changes all the time for us individually but for me, at the moment, it’s between “Throwback” and “Cruel.” They just have a lot of energy and whatever feelings you’re in that day, you can just let it all out and have fun with it! (Both of them you can catch on our new EP coming out on April 12th - it’ll only be on vinyl!)
Who are some of your musical influences? I have so many different types of influences. I would always watch loads of Top Of The Pops when I was growing up. It’d be all the old shows. My grandma would record them and we’d watch them together. I discovered so many artists through that and just became obsessed, Marc Bolan (T.Rex) was always someone that just struck me. I feel influenced by a lot of melodies too, A Whiter Shade Of Pale-type, just completely sucks you in. I could write you a long ol’ list full of people that influence me: Debbie Harry, Amy Winehouse, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, Hayley Williams, Billie Holliday, Kurt Cobain, there are so many. There are so many inspiring stories and people, and I like to try and combine all the elements of the things and sounds I love.

To pre-order CURRLS’ upcoming vinyl-only EP Let's Talk About The Weather head to their Bandcamp.

Saloon Dion (@saloon_dion)

Homebase: Bristol (UK)
Tell us about a highlight of the event…The highlight of the festival was simply discovering new bands that we’d never heard before. Prewn, Robber Robber and Starcleaner Reunion were amongst our favourites.
How would you describe your sound? We like to call it “Post Brit-Pop.” It’s got an early 90’s British sound with more modern tendencies. There are some hints of punk and hardcore thrown in too.
Do you have any pre-show rituals? We just like to relax together as a team and have a laugh before a show. We always forget to write out our set list so we’re usually writing one on random items, like receipts and paper plates before we go out on stage.
Best spot to watch a Saloon Dion show? It has to be at home in Bristol, at a venue called The Lanes. Hometown shows always hit hard.
What’s your favorite song to perform live? “You Want More,” the final track on our debut EP, and usually, the final song in our set.

Watch Saloon Dion’s music video for “Heaven Sent” now. You can buy their debut EP Muckers on Bandcamp.

Glimmer (@glimmerisaband)

Homebase: Brooklyn/Hudson Valley
How would you describe The New Colossus Festival? It's probably the best music festival NY has seen in awhile. It reminds me a bit of CMJ in its heyday and the fact that it's localized on the LES makes it super cool. I think what also makes it really special is the bands are highly curated so pretty much any show you walk into you're going to hear something great.
What’s your songwriting process? It usually starts with me messing around on a guitar until an idea comes that I think is interesting. It's hard to explain where songs come from but if I can't stop playing it eventually I'll record a rough demo. Then the band will get together and make it better.
Favorite piece of gear: I have a '66 Super Reverb. It sounds incredible. It's pretty heavy and unwieldy but I take it to every show just because I need to hear that sound when we play. I'm a big fan of bringing your own gear to shows. Either that or my NYC Big Muff Pi.
Did you catch any other bands at the festival? If so, any standouts? I caught most of the bands we played with during the Shoegaze Day Party. Since a couple of us were coming from upstate NY we were only there for the day unfortunately. We got to see Keep, Talking To Shadows, Sunnsetter and Silent Mass. There's a bunch of bands I've been checking out online though that we missed like Crystal Canyon, Iceblynk and Bloody Knives. All great bands.
What’s your favorite song to perform live? Probably our first single “Self Destroyed.” It's a fun song to play. The riff is pretty heavy.

Listen to Glimmer’s latest single “Buried” now.