The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Presents upcoming shows

Governors Island - Ticketed Colonels' Row Show
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FAQ & DIRECTIONS click here

All Ferries for the Governors Island Passion Pit show will depart regularly from lower Manhattan at the North end of the Battery Maritime Building starting at 5:00PM - 10 South Street, New York, NY. The Battery Maritime Building is easily accessible from the the 2/3, J/M/Z, R, and A/C subway stops.

Returning ferries from Governors Island will run approximately every 20 minutes back from the Island all evening. Please note that returning ferries may stop at either the Battery Maritime Building OR Pier 11 (Wall Street & South Street) which is only a few hundred yards North of the Battery Maritime Building and also accessible to the the 2/3, J/M/Z, R, and A/C subway stops.
Passion Pit
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Redemption. Paranoia. Guilt. And brief glimpses of a better tomorrow, all cloaked in pop hooks that truly help the medicine go down.

What is this? Another lost LP from Brian Wilson’s sandbox phase? If only things were that simple. What we’re really alluding to here is Passion Pit’s first proper full-length, Manners, a bird-flipping break from the blogosphere by a 21 year old with much more on his manic mind than girls, girls, girls. You know, important matters, like the end of the world and learning to love someone other than the man in the mirror. That’s the thing people missed about Passion Pit’s debut EP, Chunk of Change. While it was originally meant as a Valentine’s Day gift for a girlfriend who “put up with” frontman Michael Angelakos, that detail’s only half of a story that isn’t so cuddly when you consider the circumstances.

You see, Angelakos has written songs since he was a piano-pounding 5 year old, from spooky and spare folk tunes to pit-stirring ska punk. But one day, he just stopped. Not by choice. Angelakos’ creative well was simply in need of a severe refill, so he started toying with the plug-ins and infinite possibilities of a computer program. Six tracks later, Chunk of Change was born by default. In need of an impromptu thank you card and some feedback from friends, Angelakos started spreading the songs around—quite casually, really. Which is impossible to do in an era when blogs are as obsessed with breaking the Next Big Thing as labels are.

Flash forward to 2008. With Chunk of Change’s official unmixed/mastered pressing in tow, Angelakos and the ever-evolving Passion Pit band play to a sold-out crowd at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. A crowd that sees nothing wrong with singing along to every word; even several Manners selections, learned via osmosis by the second verse. With flash bulbs popping in his face like the frontline of a rifle-toting army, Angelakos notes the bizarre scene in front of him but never loses sight of why he’s here, of his calling to craft pitch-perfect pop songs—hooks that nip at your heels and choruses that burrow into your brain.

A real deal album in other words, one that delivers on the blissful and bright promises of early fan favorites like “Sleepyhead.” It took nearly two months of “explosive” off-the-cuff sessions with producer Chris Zane (Les Savy Fav, The Walkmen) to get there—everything was written and recorded on the fly—but Manners is exactly that, an irresistible, filler-free glimpse into the mind of a man who’d like to unleash his very own Pet Sounds someday.

Check the carefully-sculpted songwriting on display: the speaker-panning synths and slightly sinister children’s chorus (straight outta P.S. 22 in NYC) of “Little Secrets” and “The Reeling,” the lead dulcimer loops and melancholic melodies of “Moth’s Wings,” the ecstatic, riled-up climax of “Folds in Your Hands.” All part of a greater plan, the next step of which is taking Passion Pit’s live show to a level that matches, and eventually exceeds, Manners’ ambition and kaleidoscopic soundscapes. Because when Angelakos says he wants to be the next Randy Newman, he’s dead serious. And when he adds that Passion Pit is “a band with a lead songwriter, not just Michael Angelakos and these guys,” it’s clear he’s just getting started.
Tokyo Police Club
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The gentlemen of Tokyo Police Club grew up dreaming of rock stardom—playing air guitar, lip syncing to songs in front of the mirror, and practicing interviews before bed.

One fateful day, Dave, Graham, Greg, and Josh decided to learn some instruments and write some songs. It took a few years and a few bands before the four friends created Tokyo Police Club. The first ten shows or so attracted crowds of friends and parents. There were plenty of cupcakes to go around. Soon a reputation for infectious songs and exuberant live performances added to the decadent baked goods and an unstoppable musical force was born.
We Were Promised Jetpacks
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myspace
Following closely in the footsteps of The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks are yet another hugely talented young scottish band added to the FatCat roster. The 4-piece came to our attention when listening to some of the friends on the Frightened Rabbit Myspace page. Though recent months has seen the band tour the UK with their aforementioned friends, the four preceding years have consisted of local gigs in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh, allowing WWPJ to find their sound and hone their live performance.

Assembled in Edinburgh as high school friends in 2003, their first ever gig saw them winning their school's battle of the bands competition. Proceeding shows were after school performances around the city of Edinburgh which were well attended and fuelled the band with a hunger and ambition. If the nascent WWPJ aural template embraced light-footed compositions – few effects pedals, traditional song structures, clear-cut guitars - succeeding years have seen WWPJ soar aural heights and mine emotional depths in every sense: the band you will encounter now are a cacophonous tour de force: louder, wilder, avidly literate; fiercely melodic, yet eagerly restrained. Lyrics and vocal melodies come courtesy of Adam Thompson, everything else arises from the full group; Adam Thompson (Guitar/Vocals), Michael Palmer (Guitar), Sean Smith (Bass) and Darren Lackie (Drums).

Before even releasing a single, WWPJ have laid claim to some recent successes which bode well for the future of the band. A well recorded three-track demo was circulated and managed to pick up a KEXP track of the day over the pond, and plays on national stations in the UK were popping up on XFM, BBC and Q radio. Before the announcement of WWPJ signing to FatCat Records, a strong hint was sitting on the shelves across the UK in the form of inclusion on a recent FatCat sampler, mounted onto Plan B magazine.

A tour through September 2008 as main support for Frightened Rabbit garnered some great reviews for WWPJ. This being their first jaunt into England, healthy crowds arrived early on each evening due to the huge buzz in Scotland now filtering down south of the border. You could loosely pin some reference points onto WWPJ; the vocals reminiscent of Morrisy or Paul Banks (Interpol), clever guitar interplay similar to something you’d hear on a Billy Mahonie track, dynamically you could compare them to Mogwai, and generally Futureheads/Hot Club De Paris/Postcard/Fire Engine are all good markers.

With an album scheduled for May 2009, and singles around this, the forthcoming year of releases and touring is set to be a busy one for We Were Promised Jetpacks.
Suckers
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Suckers Seek a Wild and Imaginative Musical Landscape... The experimental side of indie pop has gotten a nice little creative boost lately, thanks, in part, to the artistic contributions of bands such as Brooklyn's own Animal Collectiveand Portland's Menomena. Tack another "Made in New York" outfit on this short list of artists challenging the sonic limits of modern day indie pop. Comprised of Quinn Walker, Austin Fisher, Brian Aiken, and mystery man Pan, Suckers offer indefinable and stunningly unpredictable fare that ranges anywhere on the sonic scope between sedate guitar songs and crunchy, erratic drones. It is a new musical landscape that Suckers have set out to find; one that lies beyond the fringes of more traditional pop, psychedelia, noise, and folk music. Packing their knapsacks with a wild assortment of ambient guitar work, ritualistic percussion, wolf pack vocals, and a variety of other knick knacks (organs, keys, horns, etc), Suckers set up camp in a manic, yet wildly imaginative place where pop music is contrived of equal parts melody and dissonance; a place where musical limits do not account for much. - David Pitz, Deli Magazine
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