New Colossus: Wednesday
Landing at DROM, Baker Falls, and Berlin on March 5, 2025
Test Plan tests the waters at Berlin on Wednesday, March 5 2025.
M for Montreal holds down the fort at Drom with Amery, Diamond Day, Laughing and more.
They call this music festival the New Colossus. That’s no joke. Hump Day News counted one hundred and ninety-six bands, playing on twelve stages, spread over six days in this sixth edition of the festival. That’s the kind of critical mass you can reach when you’ve timed your event as a landing pad for international acts on their way to an even bigger festival, SXSW. But New Colossus does just fine on its own merits, thanks. Local, national, and international talent converge on the Lower East Side to play music, make memories, and trade notes on chopped cheese. “Hey, I’m walking here!”
Amery at DROM
Amery
Amery, the latest musical incarnation of Amery Sandford, performed as a breezy indie rock five-piece. Sandford leaned into fronter duties, seating herself on the lip of the stage to serenade the room. The electropop soundscapes provided her with all sorts of room to explore the different pop flavors. The live set foregrounded rock n roll textures – chiefly, the electric guitar – in ways that get softplayed on her latest LP Continue As Amery.
Diamond Day at DROM
Diamond Day
Diamond Day is the type of band that you suspect lives permanently within the sunburnt haze of an Instagram filter. The two-piece create dense tapestries of sound, whether they’re leading with a guitar or sampler, that shape themselves into pop concepts as varied as trinkets on a charm bracelet. To describe their live show as reserved is an understatement. They stood on stage like ancient stone monuments: sublime and full of mystery, if somewhat opaque.
Laughing at DROM
Laughing
The four-piece Laughing has the kind of jangly indie rock sound that you could airdrop into any one of a half dozen decades, and it would still feel right at home. A tight rhythm section settled each song into a timeless groove while the guitars sang paeans to high heaven. If this type of music ever goes out of style, it’s rock n roll itself that’s going out of style. Shout out to the band’s parallel parking issues, trotted out during some stage banter. Sometimes you’ve got to rely on what I’ve heard called the “Philly bump” in order to squeeze into a spot. And is congestion pricing making it any easier to find those spots?
Eyas at Baker Falls
Eyas
Baker Falls is warm during the daytime, eh? The big, glass, sun-facing exterior catches all the light and heat of a greenhouse. Nothing you can’t fix with a spin of the thermostat, but New Colossus unfolded right on the cusp of spring this year as the days and nights began their awkward, shambling shuffle from chilly to warmer temperatures.
Nobody knows how to dress. Venues don’t know whether to hit the heat or the AC. It’s a beautiful time of year, a sweet release from the Big Freeze, the birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming. But until we collectively stabilize at the next seasonal plateau, we’re all making the wrong choices by about a 5-10 degree margin.
Eyas is the brainchild of Baltimore’s Jenna Balderson. A quirky, vocals-forward pop experiment with a touch of RnB. To make the magic happen for the Baker Falls’ live set, the band scaled up to five musicians. “Five to one, one to five.” What the hell did Jim Morrison mean by that? What did he mean by anything?
However many musicians were on stage, the experience still bore the conspicuous watermark of the singer and songwriter, with Balderson stepping into the spotlight for extended solo riffs while the rest of the band sat back, nodded their heads, and presumably felt the vibe.
Otis Shanty at Baker Falls
Otis Shanty
Somerville’s Otis Shanty peppered their set with new material. What counts as “new”? Anything after their EP Early Bird, and for sure after their LP Up On The Hill. The indie rockers have a quietly sophisticated approach, using their four-piece to mix sound textures like paints on a palette. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist (chiefly, synth, with the occasional trumpet cameo) Sadye Bobbette split time with other voices on one or two of the newer tunes. Shanty Town is neither Licksville, Riffopolis, Hook City, nor Earworm Central. You are not going to be chanting their signature melodies after your team scores a touchdown at the Big Game. They have their golden moments, though, and win you over through an accumulation of small Sunday morning epiphanies.
Wet Iguanas at Baker Falls
Wet Iguanas
A sneak peak at the Wet Iguanas, who were scheduled to appear later in the festival at The Spanish Wave showcase. A four-piece out of Barcelona that speeded straight to the banger hooks. How wet were these Iguanas? Pretty damn wet.
Peer Pleasure at Berlin
Peer Pleasure
Maybe we should save the Peer Pleasure review for the Sunday performance at Baker Falls? We got more material at that show. But let’s not undersell this Irish zillion-piece ensemble, the pale, white, and lovely version of a post-hardcore Wu Tang Clan. They deserve a mention every time they get on stage. Buzzy music festivals were built for this exact type of band, which ripped up each venue they played with a happy-go-lucky kind of drunken yabbo bumblery. Topless. Always topless. Always in the pit. Always consuming massive amounts of Guinness. Always planting a raucous, party atmosphere into the earth like stakes that stab six miles deep. Go see this band.
Test Plan at Berlin
Test Plan
I saw bands try to follow Peer Pleasure at other points in the festival. “They tried and failed?” Like the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam of the Bene Gesserit tells Paul Atreides in Dune: “They tried and died.” So let’s give credit where credit is due. London’s Test Plan cooked. The three-piece art rockers combined post-punk “fuckit” energy with a high degree of musicianship. The drummer, who also handled most of the vocals, has a full plate in this band. He unloaded percussive assaults throughout the set while the guitarist and bassist raced to keep up.
WATCH TEST PLAN LIVE ↓
That’s it. You survived. Or is there another day of music at The New Colossus Fest? The massive indie music festival on NYC’s Lower East Side is already booked for 2026. Hump Day News, in all likelihood, will see you there.
Photo Gallery
Test Plan tests the waters at Berlin.