By Shari Monique Gab

Tuesday night in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Audyssey and Arlene’s Grocery officially announced they’re going steady at the first monthly The Neighborhood event.

Arlene’s has been a LES cornerstone and stomping ground for unsigned artists, bands on the rise, and celebrity sightings, giving access to underbelly acts and creating a home space for quality sound.

Brooklyn ladies Jeanann Dara and Marisol Limon of Smoke & Flowers came across the bridge to open it up with their symphonic scope.  Their music sounds like a long friendship bracelet braided in with synth, live samplings, vocals, a viola, and keys.  Dressed in girl-ish vintage with touches of galactic goth, the girls look like Tim Burton space dolls but deliver a hearty vocal harmony that sounds like the perfect soundtrack to a warm New York summer night, sitting on a fire escape facing the night skyline and smoking cigarettes until heat hits the fingers.  Romantic and enchanting, they closed out their set with a flood of viola that could vibrated through to the very fine hairs on the back of the neck.

Honeychild of Honeychild vs The ReAver next took stage and cut the room with an a capella Irish standard, “Gin a body meet a body / Comin thro’ the rye / Gin a body kiss a body / Need a body cry?” The two people on either side of me simultaneously murmured a complimentary “Damn.”  Damn right.  Her vocals are a gun made of molasses instantly blessed with the audience’s respect.  Her counterpart, Husayn Albert Ruhe, aka The ReAver, loves residing ‘round the corner on Ludlow.  “The LES, where makin’ noise is good,” says Ruhe.  And though billed with a ‘versus’ between their names, the collaboration of these long-time friends was less battle and more benevolence.  The two are talented and familiar in a way that they’re comfortable working their craft, toying with the noise and building a diverse set of songs for summer, for making out, for crying, and for combinations thereof. Somehow light-hearted, but seasoned with depth, the audience very much connecting with the unassuming duo’s hazy, almost empathetic, melodic delights.

Honeychild Coleman

Part of what makes Arlene’s such a cool space is its limited capacity – the venue only holds about 150 people. It’s small, and Inyang Bassey’s gospel belting really tested the walls’ maximum capacity limits.  The girl has played with Moby and the Dap Kings, but last night we were invited to her “coming out party,” where after finishing a song with the vigor of an exorcism she smiled and said, “I think we’re warmed up,” with a wink of irony. The crowd threw back, “You were already hot!” She outed herself and her group for only having held two rehearsals prior to Arlene’s, but one would never know: Bassey shined in an emotional striptease of unapologetic, sexy soul.

Inyang Bassey

But, it’s the Lower East Side, and diversity is a side dish. Cue whiplash change of pace, with four manboys from Boston coming out singing self-described prog rock “about unicorn farts.” The Shills opened their set with said song of legend and flatulence, titled “For All That Moves.” Their sound is uncomplicatedly alternative with tight, emotional lyrics and a smattering of chords to beat you in the brain.  It popped in a way that gave the audience a good excuse to follow the frontman’s lead and do a bit of jumping around. Their sound clearly spawned from men with a love of music grown from boys jamming in the basement/garage.

The Shills

With electro chamber pop from Brooklyn, straight-up city soul, and imported alt rock, The Neighborhood’s first monthly event at Arlene’s Grocery felt like a colorful mirror of what can be heard wandering through the streets of the Lower East Side. We’ll be back for more next month and every second Tuesday, and check back next week for video of the event from our lovely friends Dig For Fire.