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.