On Friday night, AltPress and Marshall teamed up for a fall showcase at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right. With the hum of the Williamsburg bridge in the background, and NYC-based artist Body Meat’s DJ set beckoning inward, an eager crowd spilled into the venue for a celebration of independent artists and AP’s fall issue.
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At a custom AP Newsstand built inside the venue, we commemorated and celebrated the massive legacies of AltPress and Marshall — and the work both brands are doing to serve today’s modern, diverse, alternative musical landscape through our respective platforms. At the newsstand, energy was high, as audience members held the new AltPress issue, flipping from features on Slipknot to Pierce the Veil, Malice K to beabadoobee — as well as profiles of independent artists who would hit the stage that same night, emerging acts Dirt Buyer, Taraneh, and AP’s much-covered Philly favorites Sweet Pill. For the first time in years, we witnessed concertgoers pick up the magazine that had curated their Warped Tour mixtapes, and in many ways, their childhood — a magazine that’s now pushing for a more inclusive alternative space, one that is open to more artists, and more readers.
For this showcase, though the music was the central focus, there was an opportunity for everyone to leave with something tangible, too — whether it was a magazine, a Marshall speaker, custom earplugs, their favorite band’s merch, and more. And though the room hit capacity and then some, it seems they all did. We even spotted some Marshall totes and AP magazines around Manhattan later that night — floating around Tompkins and being thumbed through at Superiority Burger.
That being said, the showcase wasn’t about goodies. It was about three things — the three independent artists who held the evening together with punk rock and soulful emo. In the packed room, with its disco ball hung high, hundreds of sweaty bodies gathered, moshed, and crowd surfed. From Dirt Buyer’s opening set, the audience was locked into his unique brand of emo-folk, moving to the artist’s harrowing and guttural Elliott Smith-tinged performance — which ended with the especially felt, spine-tingling track “Tears My Heart in Two.”
Taraneh took the stage next, a stripe of hair with a passionate, dynamic Debbie Harry belt that took the energy level and riled it up. Rocking toward the avid audience, her performance of “Prophet,” a track off her latest album New Age Prayer, had every phone in the room flick up, desperate to remember the moment.
For the final, and headlining, act, Sweet Pill gave us everything they had. Which is not an unusual thing for the emo outfit — whose powerful performances have garnered them a truly dedicated fanbase, many of whom had camped out to stand shoulder to shoulder with us on Friday. For those in the crowd unfamiliar with Sweet Pill, as we heard and overheard over and again, the evening had them hooked. Their sound, which echoes of early Paramore, is triumphant, devious, and well suited for Friday the 13th. Fans clamored toward the front, closer to vocalist Zayna Youssef — though between her powerful, relentless voice, her shock of bright red hair, and her fiending stage presence, she, and Sweet Pill, were felt all the way to the back of the room and beyond.
As for what’s next — the AP x Marshall showcase is hitting the road, and heading to Los Angeles. On Sept. 27, we’ll have rebuilt — and restocked — the newsstand, for its second and last show at Silverlake’s Zebulon. Upholding the same ethos, supporting independent, emerging artists, our West Coast event will see three new acts — D-beat-loving LA punk outfit Reckling, Afrofuturism artist and “punk-rock fairy” King Isis, and experimental, recently resurrected indie-rock act Slow Hollows. Each of these bands, all featured in AP’s fall issue, represents the same dedication to alternative music as our NY lineup, and we’re excited to offer that energy once again, in a new city, through new voices.
