The second day of Northside I started with the early show at Brooklyn Bowl, where I caught Xenia Rubinos and Sinkane. This is where I got my dose of eclectic tropical music with Afro-beat roots. Xenia is a really powerful singer, with a big, beautiful, booming voice. She can sing all over the place, and she does. It’s actually a little wacky the way she uses her voice to make all these kinds of crazy sounding samples that form a large basis of her songs. Much of the time, she’s not even singing words, but when she does, she switches seamlessly between Spanish and English. Along with her resourceful vocal chords, she was accompanied by a synth and sampler, along with a live drummer.
Rubinos had this knack for taking a song on a journey; starting it one way, morphing it into what would seem like a whole new song, and then bringing it right back to where it was just to remind us that that had just happened, and drummer man kept up with her on beat the entire time. I got the feeling she might be a hard person to keep up with, especially since the way she changed things up it could be so distracting that it was easy to forget exactly which path this song was taking and coming back around to. That probably sounds confusing, because it is, but she knew exactly what she was doing the entire time. She also made the best faces while she sang, like this was the most fun thing in the world to her. After I got over how all over the place and completely knew to me her music was, she was definitely winning me over with just the pure wildness of it. I have to respect someone who goes all out no matter what, and that’s exactly what she did.
Sinkane was up next, with his band, all playing this super chill fusion of funk, jazz, with psych rock and a bit of an Afro-beat groove in there. In short, it’s blissed out booty shaken music. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, having played in a bunch of bands like Caribou, Of Montreal, Born Ruffians, and Yeasayer, so he’s learned how to blend all of this into an indie pop smoothie. At this show, Sinkane primarily stuck to guitar and synth, with a pretty sick guitarist and bassist, and drummer just holding onto that beat, keeping it steady. Everyone in the crowd was just bobbing, holding onto their drinks, feeling the vibe. Sinkane was a pretty smooth drug.
Next up I headed to The Gutter, where my friends in Lazyeyes were playing, as well as Shilpa Ray, who recently headlined Union Pool. When I arrived though, I caught a brand new band to me called The Meaning of Life, who I immediately took a liking to. I love nostalgic ’90s alternative bands like Velocity Girl, Henry’s Dress, and The Aisler’s set, who I’d wager the members of The Meaning of Life also grew up with, or would definitely like if they haven’t. It’s nice to be reminded of music like that, and that means I’m going to be looking out for more from this trio.
