Show Review: Sugarglass, Holiem, Sleepwell, Servants
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Batten Down The Hatches, A Storm Is Coming
January 7, 2024
All week the weather forecasted a possible nor’easter for New York City. Last night snow drifted down and made a mess, but an all out storm failed to fully materialize. The real storm was inside Williamsburg’s The Meadows. Fans materialized in full to be a part of the pummeling nor’easter that was Sugarglass, Holiem, Sleepwell, and Servants.
We saw the name Sugarglass on the show poster and immediately imagined a Willy Wonka movie. Some kind of scene where there’s a room with massive amounts of hot liquid sugar pouring into sugar glass sheets. For what purpose? We don’t know. Anyway, this band is a baseball flying through a sugar glass window. If Kurt Cobain smelled like teen spirit, Sugarglass smells like teen rage. One chorus had enough repetitions of “EVERYONE’S OUT TO GET YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” that we actually got paranoid and checked over our shoulder. They had a fun back and forth between a relatively low key verse of narration paired with a scorching chorus.
Holiem was sludgy, heavy, and headbanging. A metric ton of noise and many heavy hits in unison. Some song arrangements were so creative that we couldn’t keep up. At one point we became a boat lost in their subsonic ocean, fully losing track of ourselves. Waves of sound slammed into us as we forgot where we came from and where we were going. They introduced one song by saying “This song’s for the people that like looking at their shoes”. Looking at the picture we snapped of them we saw the setlist on the stage and found out that the song's name is SHUGAZI. That sent us laughing all the way to the bank.
Sleepwell left us wide awake. We wondered why its members were stretching, flexing, limbering up on stage while getting ready. Like they were ready for Olympic gold. Once the first note rattled our skull though we understood why. Their bass ripped. We went to the bathroom way in the back and things were shaking. Lights dimmed low and red. We were in Dante's inferno, or a pizza oven. Same thing. After one song, the singer declared “Happy January 6th everybody”. The most sarcastic rendition of The Star Spangled Banner followed the statement, cutting off mid word to suddenly blast into the next song. It was a musical insurrection. God Bless America.
While the last band Servants was setting up, we heard the PA play Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick” off their 1988 debut album Superfuzz Bigmuff. By now that album should be a part of Rock and Roll canon, it is often mentioned as one of Grunge’s first newborn screams. Click that link and learn, kids. The real reason we’re mentioning this though is because the song played while Servants guitarist was setting up with a Bigmuff pedal on his board. Movie magic could not script that moment and we don’t think he even had any idea. The music was cool and one of a kind, who knew headbanging came in so many different flavors. They mixed up their set with a magic trick of their own. It was shocking, you had to be there. Someone from the audience screamed “How did he do that??!?”
Rambler Magazine was there with zines and merch. We bought a copy of All Night On Film: New York Issue II and are still flipping through and absorbing it. They’ve got a great thing going so we’ll be hopping on for the ride and hope they keep doing their thing. If the snowflakes turned you into a snowflake causing you to miss the show, make sure to connect with Sugarglass, Holiem, Sleepwell, and Servants below. 2024’s just begun and we can’t wait to see more of them!
