Photos by Lauren Khalfayan, find more of her work here.
I arrived at The Glove at 8pm, just in time for doors, but rather than a line of people waiting to get in I only encountered Nikki from Thick carrying in some gear.
“Doors got pushed back until 9 because there’s a karate class going on upstairs,” she said without missing a beat. Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised. Even at first exposure this is something that did not at all seem out of the ordinary for the venue.
This is the magic of The Glove, a flexible DIY space that can host a martial arts class followed immediately by a rock show without losing a shred of credibility. In true ask-a-punk style there is no sign, you are either in the know or you aren’t. It’s the coolest house party around where your parents are always out of town and the landlord encourages all the wild behavior. The walls are covered with stickers and sharpie tags, both guerilla and well-curated, and the bar in the back room was serving up cocktails and tallboys of Gansett alike. There’s even a vintage shop if you feel like thrifting between sets. If you get invited to a show, or a karate class, at The Glove definitely go. It’s quite the venue.
By the time I got back a little after 9 The Glove was already filling up fast. The feeling of anticipation was palpable as the crowd eagerly awaited the bands to take the stage. The night’s lineup was stacked and we all knew we were in for a treat.
Grim Streaker kicked out the jams in high style with a fierce proto-punk set channeling the late 60s and early 70s vibes of The Stooges and The MC5 but with a powerful feminist vibe. This was the sound of rusty Detroit and dangerous old New York reconstructed from the ground up with nods to the last round of local bands that made it to the big time. A little bit of Karen O’s unhinged manic howl here, a riff or two that recall Interpol there. Where Grim Streaker succeeds is their ability to take all these references and build their own sound, leveraging decades of blue-collar garage rock n roll as a platform for a new take on tried-and-true gritty rock.
The bar was set pretty high after Grim Streaker’s set, and the crowd was more than ready for a good time as Thick began to set their gear up on The Glove’s tiny stage. Tonight was all about them after all, a graduation party of sorts commemorating the digital release of the band’s latest EP and signing with legendary West Coast punk label Epitaph Records.
Launching into their set Kate, Nikki, and Shari were playing at maximum level right out of the gate like a muscle car ripping down the tarmac in a quarter-mile run, all smoke and squealing tires and barely controlled forward momentum. The crowd was fully along for the ride, shouting and cheering and pogoing like crazy making the floor bounce and flex like a packed trampoline. This was likely one of the last times anyone would see Thick perform at a venue like this and we were all hellbent on giving them a proper sendoff into the big leagues.
The band played all three of their new songs alongside a full set of their previous material. I would hesitate to label the band as either punk or pop-punk, their sound is so much more complex than that and references a different type of rebellion. They’re equal parts Bikini Kill and Clueless, like Cher Horowitz in a black leather motorcycle jacket or the moment Elle Woods realizes she’s not going to Harvard Law School to win back her boyfriend, she’s doing it because she wants to take control of her own future but with sugar coated razorblade riffs playing in the background instead of the movie’s cotton candy score.
This is the reason I think Thick is going to be right at home on Epitaph Records. They’ve got the sound, they’ve got the attitude, and they’re going in full bore to an established all-boys club with a fresh new perspective and take-no-prisoners mindset. Over the past couple years I’ve watched a number of all-girl or girl-led bands rise up to prominence; Death Valley Girls, L.A. Witch, Feels; and now Thick can join their ranks as the new standard bearers of the next wave of alternative music. The future of rock is female, and it’s about damn time those voices are heard.
Thick’s set ended as abruptly as it began with everyone riding a sweaty wave of endorphins and good vibes but something very different was about to happen. In the blink of an eye the audience seemed to morph into something different, something harder. The crowd looked a little older, a little rougher, a little more dangerous. It was almost time for Surfbort to take the stage.
Brooklyn’s Surfbort can be summed up by the lower half of frontwoman Dani Miller’s outfit that evening even more so than her colorful MGMT style warpaint. She was rocking a pair of bright red gym shorts pulled over top men’s Gucci jeans in a cut and wash that was popular around 25 years ago, a fantastic mix of thrift store high-brow and Walmart low-brow coexisting as a giant fuck you to acceptable fashion tastes gleefully reveling in its own absurdity.
As the band tuned up the gold letter balloons from leftover from Thick’s set were subtly modified by dropping the T, leaving only a giant floating HICK hovering at the back of the stage. Very appropriate given Surfbort’s David Bowie meets Trailer Park Boys aesthetic and a genius execution. This is the first time I had seen the band, for whatever reason I had always just missed them when they came through town but totally aware of the recent successes they’d achieved, growing beyond zine-darlings onto bigger and higher profile stages and festivals.
As a result, it was clearly obvious that Surfbort had grown much too large for The Glove’s tiny DIY confines. The band blistered through their set at full speed, constantly at risk of bursting out over the monitors into the mini circle pit that had lurched to life at the foot of the stage. Short punky blasts that occasionally had me recalling early Hellacopters and Turbonegro in turns while maintaining an aggressively positive vibe. This band did not stop moving for an instant until Dani dropped the mic at the end of their last song and what a wild ride it was, a kind of window into what it may be like for Thick to play a tiny DIY show in a couple years when the next class of NYC bands graduates to the majors. They’ll put on a great show, but they’ll be more comfortable on a bigger stage.
When the lights came up and the crowd starting returning to Earth it was clear to everyone that we had just witnessed something special. This wasn’t just another gig at a DIY space in Brooklyn, this was a celebration of local bands working hard and making it. This was a celebration of female musicians making their voices heard loud and clear. This was a celebration of New York City.
