Most bands are boring: They pick a dependable sound/influence/genre and stick with it to the end. But sometimes the world gets lucky, as if Martians had just deigned to join the human race in order to help us advance as a species. And truthfully, that’s the most punk rock thing an artist can do — whatever they want. But everyone, even the least pre-conceived among us, has to start somewhere.
Gnarcissists, who will perform at Bumblefest, are a band of New York City-based music lovers who take inspiration from a little bit of everything — in the tradition of many NYC bands that came before them — while exuding a “mischievous, iconoclastic and grotesquely charming energy,” to quote the glowing write-up from their hosts at SXSW in 2019.
The group gets some juju from Richard Hell and the Voidoids, adds a dash of Ramones spunk, and translates the live performance into something akin to a Butthole Surfers experience. What does that sound like? Like huffing paint in a sawmill with a raging hangover and an angry hard-on. The kindred souls they’ve shared stages with include Amyl & the Sniffers, Black Lips, Surfbort, Gibby Haynes, Dead Boys, Roky Erickson, The Nude Party and Tropical Fuck Storm, if that gives you some idea.
In a brief, co-signed update for PureHoney, band members said they’ve just finished recording their first full-length album, which is being produced by Gus Oberg, best known for his long association with New York indie-rock heroes The Strokes. “The record was definitely something we’ve been waiting to do for a long time,” the band reports, “and it was a pretty wild and fun experience recording with Gus.”
As that debut winds its way toward a release, this is a good time to catch these new torchbearers of the weirdo, bon vivant, musical interloper tradition whose practitioners bleed feedback and get gnarly with audiences, and only follow the rules they make for themselves.
Bumblefest, with 40 acts on 5 stages, is Sept. 1 and 2 in downtown West Palm Beach. bumblefest.com, gnarcissists.bandcamp.com ~ Tim Moffatt
