NOTE: All photos are copyright of Dean Keim 2025
NYC alt-rockers Sunflower Bean returned to their Brooklyn home ground for a big headlining show at Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to celebrate their new album Mortal Primetime which they self-produced featuring mixing by Caesar Edmunds of The Killers & Wet Leg fame. The trio has been a staple of the Big Apple DIY scene for over a decade now, consisting of bassist and vocalist Julia Cumming, guitarist and occasional vocalist Nick Kivlen, and drummer Olive Faber. I’ve seen this band many times over the years, with my first time being at a small showcase for the CMJ music festival at Baby’s All Right way back in 2014, and it feels like I’ve watched this band grow up from young hard-rocking psych rockers to experienced glam masters over the years, and it has been an epically loud and wild journey. Since their early days they have always seemed to have a huge amount of buzz about them, and I have seen them headline shows before, but I’ve also seen them open for more bands than I can count, including Pixies, Wolf Alice, DIIV, Foxygen, Best Coast, Cherry Glazerr, and Sleigh Bells, but I feel like this is a band finally rising above the industry hunger-buzz and coming into their own with a slick and catchy pop sound that might finally get them the attention they deserve.
Opening the show was a fellow Brooklyn band called Birthday Girl, and their set felt like a sensual surrealist fever dream led by front woman Eva Smittle who oozes sexuality like Jessica Rabbit on acid, but she definitely had a darker and more solemn tone that permeated throughout, and the music was solidly rocking, with fellow songwriter and bassist Layla Passman, guitarist May Bush, and drummer Akiva Henig all doing a remarkably rocking job keeping the songs moving and shaking. There were definitely shades of classic alternative bands like Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Breeders in their sound, as well as some of that Riot Grrrl swagger and roar in the likeness of greats like Bikini Kill and L7, but they did have a particularly impressive ability to write a bright and catchy pop song as well, and it felt like there was definitely a grand battle between the light and the dark in their songs.
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The next band was another Brooklyn band called GIFT, who are certainly one of the hottest psychedelic bands on the NYC scene right now, and a group Sunflower Bean had been touring alongside of on the recent Cage The Elephant tour they were both opening for. They possess the heavy 90’s soul of psych bands like the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Spiritualized while hypnotizing you with the catchy avant-garde pop of classic space acts like Stereolab and Spacemen 3, all held together with a loud and trippy shoegaze sheen of the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride. This outstanding five-piece consisting of frontman TJ Freda, multi-instrumentalists Jessica Gurewitz and Justin Hrabovsky, drummer Gabe Camarano and bassist Kallan Campbell all clearly invoke a lot of deep alt-rock feels on the front end, but they come out the other side with a wholly new sensation, and the diversity of their different elements really gelled together in a gorgeously heavy sound.
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Sunflower Bean came out to play a powerful set to a very enthusiastic crowd of fans who have been waiting for their return to a venue I saw them play way back in 2018. They opened the set with their poppy new single “Champagne Taste” and they did play some of their more popular songs like “Who Put You Up to This?,” “There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back,” and one of my personal favorites “Nothing Romantic,” but the sound got steadily more rocking over the show with heavy metal-loving rockers like “Sunshine” and the closer of “Shake” which Julia insisted they play even though the rest of the band had already left the stage. Midway through their set Julia crooned over this iconic Polish cultural center turned concert venue deep in the heart of Brooklyn, saying “We love this place! Warsaw holding it down with those Perogies! Everything in this fucking city is so Duane Reade these days, but thank God for places like Warsaw,” which she said just before they welcomed GIFT out to pack the stage with them and play a awe-strikingly gorgeous cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” together. They also had a guest celloist by the name of Jenna Pascale on stage for some sensual strings sounds on a couple songs, and towards the end of the set Julia also introduced “a very special guest” on stage that ended up being New York State Assemblymember Zohran Kwame Mamdani who is presently running for mayor of NYC, which is not a total surprise considering the band’s previous enthusiastic support of Bernie Sanders in the past (who has similar political stances), but Zohran did give a powerful and passionate stump speech that did have the crowd hooting and hollering. The show had me hoping they would play all night, but they certainly were the featured soundtrack in my dreams when I finally got to sleep early the next morning.
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