
Barboza Presents
Been Stellar
Growing Pains
May 19
Doors: 7:00 PM
21 & Over
Barboza
May 19, 2025
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DateMay 19, 2025
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Doors Open7:00 PM
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VenueBarboza
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Ticket Prices$16.00 - $18.00
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On SaleOn Sale Now
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Ages21 & Over
Scream from New York, NY, the first album by Been Stellar, is a remarkably brutal debut
–
bruised and
volatile, it captures an image of ‘20s New York that’s unrelenting and harsh, where tenderness is a finite
resource burned up by the machinery of the city
and human connection is a luxury product. Leaving
behind the driving shoegaze of their early recordings, the NYC
-
based five
-
piece tap into the disaffected
sound and spirit of New York luminaries like Sonic Youth and Interpol, as well as the nihilistic, ye
arning
cool of Iceage and Bends
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era Radiohead, striking upon a sound that’s fearsome, buffeting and beautiful
at the same time
–
a tidal wave as viewed from underneath.
As its wry title implies, Scream from New York, NY, is a record about what happens wh
en language fails
–
between friends, partners, a city and its citizens
–
and the primal scream you might let out when
words just don’t work anymore. Guitarist Skyler Knapp, vocalist Sam Slocum, Brazilian
-
born guitarist
Nando Dale, bass player Nico Brunstei
n and drummer Laila Wayans met as undergrads at NYU, bonding
over a shared sense of humor and forming a motley crew based more on emotional compatibility than
any rigid ideas of shared artistic sensibility. Finding that last vestiges of the city’s famed 20
00s and 2010s
DIY underground had been ground down to nothing, the band put on their own shows, renting spaces
and collaborating with friends to build the world they wanted to inhabit.
Determined to break new sonic ground, the band embarked on a relentle
ss practice schedule, even
renting scrappy studios on days off during tour. After befriending him at SXSW, the band tapped
producer Dan Carey (black midi, Wet Leg) to help coalesce the disparate elements of their sound that
had been percolating: forceful,
driving physicality; pop classicism; gnarled beauty; and a rich emotional
core. The resulting 10
-
song album announces Been Stellar as gimlet
-
eyed chroniclers of contemporary
youth, staring through noise and confusion into the dark heart of modern life. The
se songs embody the
spirit of a city that makes and breaks its inhabitants on a daily basis
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an irony befitting the album’s tone:
Been Stellar’s preternatural ability to capture the disconnection that haunts New York with photorealist
detail might just be
the thing that vaults them into its pantheon.
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