Yesterday, the fifth annual New Colossus Festival started. We have covered the event since its inaugural year in 2019, but if you are unfamiliar with it, it is NYC’s answer to the music leg of Austin’s SXSW. The festival is much smaller, featuring over 150 artists instead of the more than a thousand acts in Texas.

But that comes with the advantage that all venues are within short walking distance, so you need to spend far less effort on festival logistics than for SXSW. Also, there is a higher density: you may find yourself standing next to a band you just saw on stage. That fosters good connections and even business opportunities.

Last year, our favorite act was probably Yndling, a dream-pop band from Norway (if you speak a Scandinavian language, you may find the pun hidden here). We asked mastermind Silje Espevik about her impressions of the 2023 festival:

“I was so lucky to get to play New Colossus last year, it was my first ever overseas show and to be able to play to an audience who just seemed to have such a genuine interest and joy for music really made it a great first experience in the US. It was also such a great opportunity to connect with like minded musicians and others in the industry, like you guys at Glamglare who really made me feel like there's still passion in the industry even surrounding the smaller artists like myself. All in all we made some great connections over there - which I also think made an important part in me now signing my debut album to the american label Spirit Goth!"

This perfectly sums up the spirit of the festival. Silje also has a new song out, which you’ll find in this week’s playlist.

On the other hand, we are baffled that we are not familiar with most of the bands in this year’s lineup. We feature a song every day of the year, and for that, we are listening to many more every week.

Still, the festival managed to book artists primarily outside of our field of attention. I take this as evidence of the vast creative pool in music and how much can be discovered once you look behind the popularity-driven algorithmic filters of the big streaming services.

But we did our duty, listened through the lineup, and have some recommendations further down.

Last Friday, we enjoyed two new albums: Abby Sage’s debut The Rot focuses “on the decomposition and reconstruction of everything I was taught growing up” via restrained, catchy pop songs.

Also out the second album Dreamcatchers by London-based YOVA. The chamber pop record offers an "immersive journey deep into the altered state of our subconscious lives.”

Thanks for reading glamglare! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Song Pick of the Day

“lies” is about an “elusive, stoic, inscrutable girl, capable of hypnotizing you with a glance and breaking your heart,” which is not how Giorgia Piva aka georgia, georgia sees herself. But for three minutes of this delectable pop song, she takes on that role as “a sort of revenge for all the times I felt misunderstood, portrayed as someone I am not.”

iskwē is a Canadian musician we will see at the New Colossus Festival. Her new song, “A Little Piece,” came to life on a magical winter night at the Banff Centre for the Arts. “I allowed the moment to just hold me, and me it, as the song fell from my tears onto the keys.”

“Monopoly” is the new track from the singer/songwriter mentioned above Yndling. The bright, shimmering synth-pop song takes cues from the 80s, and is it just me who can hear something of fellow Norwegian act a-ha here?

The Irish, London-based singer/songwriter Tadgh Daly tells a very contemporary love story about two “emotionally broken and unavailable people falling in love” in his song “How’s your day been?” The pop song mounts into a big finale, and you root for its characters.

gglum is the stage name of Ella Smoker from London. Don’t let this lead you on the wrong track: her music is not gloomy at all, and the fourth single “Eating Rust” of her upcoming album The Garden Dreamis a lively indie pop track, albeit about a difficult time in her life. “It’s all about a period of my life where I was desperate for one person’s love and approval, which I would never get,” she recalls.

“Double Decker Death Machine” is a raucous indie rock track that recalls the moment Newcastle-based musician Melanie Baker found new inspiration in a Patti Smith interview. “It’s meant to be a bit fun and silly but also the weight of the words are still meant to act as a reminder for me to keep going,” she says.

We regard the German-based, UK-raised singer/producer/composer Emika as a „founding artist“ of glamglare, a group of female artists in the early 2010s that inspired us with fresh approaches to indie rock and electronic music. Emika now announced her fifth electronic studio album HAZE for May 31, not counting many more records with experimental or classical music. „((star key)),“ the first single is an electronic pop gem taking Emika’s signature sound to a new direction.

The New Colossus Festival 2024

If you have ever been to a music festival, then you know it's most fun when you can fully immerse yourself in it. While it is, of course, possible to go to a show here and there during the five days of the New Colossus Festival, you're missing out on all that makes this such a unique and cherished experience.

Being again among this year's delegates is a fine way to meet with other music industry people and artists. But that's only half the story. The anticipation plays a big part in the enjoyment of the festival. Identifying core bands, we must see and those we always love to see playing live. But then, while being at the festival and hopping from venue to venue, things happen differently anyway. Because... you can only plan so much!

While we're very much looking forward to seeing the following acts, we might end up seeing only a fraction, but definitely some others instead. Set times are not set in stone, and neither is our wishlist and schedule.

In any case, I hope to see you at the festival. Big THANKS to Steven, Mike, and Lio for creating such a fabulous festival and for keeping it running in its fifth year.

• airu (ES)
• Boy With Apple (SE)
• Carinae - Brooklyn, NY
• Coral Moons - Rochester, NY
• Diary - Brooklyn, NY
• Dropper - Brooklyn, NY
• FRANKIE (CA)
• Hause Plants (PT)
• Holiday Ghosts (UK)
• Hollows (UK)
• Hot Garbage (CA)
• Housewife (CA)
• HUGMYND (UK)
• Iceblyn - Queens, NY
• iskwē (CA)
• Jelly Kelly - Brooklyn, NY
• Keep - Richmond, VA
• Kingfisher (SE)
• La Sécurité (CA)
• Loveseat Pete - Asbury Park, NJ
• Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys (DE)
• Meagre Martin (DE)
• min.a - New York, NY
• Mr. Floyd Larry - Miami, FL
• O. Wake - Brooklyn, NY
• OSKA (AT)
• Robber, Robber - Burlington, VT
• Stuck in the Sound (FR)
• Tennis Courts - Brooklyn, NY
• Wan (PE)
• ZOLA - San Francisco, CA

Nine Photos from the Opening Night

(1 & 2) The heavy rain didn’t keep us from heading out and making it semi-dry to Pianos on the Lower East Side.
(3 & 6) We started our festival experience with many lovely chats, e.g., with Brad and Lisbon’s Hause Plants (of course, we wanted to meet the Festival’s only Portuguese band!), who are here posing with Ducks Ltd.
(4, 7, 8, 9) Oceans from Australia, Cucamaras from the UK with a truly fantastic show, and a gentle send-off into the night at Arlene’s Grocery by Island Moons from the US.