Voyeur Has Been Watching. Now, We Must Listen.
The new band, comprised of New York City stalwarts, is used to watching the scene. With their first single, 'Ugly', they're turning up the volume on themselves.
Published
Greenroom Catastrophe is a monthly column that serves as an intro to the phenomenology of New York music. Join the coincidental misadventures of a lifer, Dale W Eisinger, as he searches for new noise through scene reports, reminiscences, and musings on the state of New York music. Desperate for a thrill.
Has anyone noticed music is getting quieter, more cautious, more friendly? Am I simply becoming more deaf and jaded? Or is this a condition of a toothless present in which danger and mystery are no longer a driving force of art making? With such a void of rock n roll, I can’t express my gratitude for a new band as mystically and spiritually coincident with the freakout incantations of NYC's past as Voyeur. The quartet of somewhat familiar faces–Jakob Lazovick, Sharleen Chidiac, Joe Kerwin, and Max Freedberg–have clearly been doing some watching. Now’s the time to turn eyes on them.
The band’s debut recording, “Ugly,” from an EP of the same name due in early 2024, stands in contrast to a lot of the more timid tracks coming out of NYC. One must hand it to them for melding brute stoicism with understated sophistication. Voyeur harnesses a grunge/no-wave hybrid, pleasantly pummeling in the way a massage gun is, dangerously fascinating in the way standing next to a hulking mechanical operation is: therapeutic and productive by virtue of the songs’ utility and honesty. “I’m ugly in an ugly world,” goes the chorus of their debut single. Thank god not everyone wants to be a perfect pop star.
We caught up with the band as they celebrate their debut release.
Your origin story includes a tragedy. Why do you think there's such a strong link between grief and rock n’ roll?
Tragedy is everywhere. The body is a sinking ship. Time will fuck us all. Only rock n roll survives.
In an email you sent me, your stated hope is to "GET HIGH AND FUCK, GET HIGH AND FUCK, GET HIGH AND FUCK." Where?
The Empire State Building.
This isn't really a question: thank you for being sufficiently loud. Please elaborate.
I think we could be louder.
Lately, I've been feeling there are more people who want to be musicians, rather than people who want to make music. What do you think of that distinction?
Everyone should make music. Everyone should share their music. The strongest music culture comes when musicians lift each other up and when everybody feels empowered to try their hand–when there's room for experimentation and people aren't afraid to make trash.
It appears you have a complicated love/hate relationship with New York City. Please help me understand why I can't bring myself to leave, even as every day is more exhausting than the last.
It's a dirty and dangerous place. But it's good to be a cog in the machine. All of us move as one organism, but none of us meet each other's eyes when we pass in the street. It's a fame-crazed landscape of walking-dead people. And we're all just chasing another hit.
Photo by Caroline Safran.