Leo Slattery Photo
A lone child in a Rubik’s Cube hoodie stood in the middle of the small black box space at Witch Bitch Thrift on Saturday night, trying and failing with a kendama, a Japanese wooden ball and stick toy. Around him, people trickled in in groups of two or three, ready to see folk-punk acts Apes of the State, Myles Bullen, and Lars and their Lilac Ukulele.
The band members socialized, waving to the people they recognized and smiling and introducing themselves to those they didn’t. Everyone was dressed for the occasion: a sea of Doc Martens, work boots, and old sneakers. Pants, mostly black, usually dotted in patches of the wearer’s favorite bands. The magnum opus, an Apes t‑shirt from a previous tour. April, lead singer of Apes of the State, seemed equal parts flattered and fascinated by the appearance of her decade-old merch. The most diehard of fans wore battle jackets, a punk tradition of sewing handmade patches of bands onto a denim coat. The battle jackets at this particular show almost all had Apes of the State on them. It was standing room only, save for a chair left in the corner that people piled coats under. The chair itself remained empty, as if for Elijah the prophet.
Apes of the State and Myles Bullen have been on tour playing two shows a day: at night, they play at clubs and community spaces, and during the day, at rehab centers. As she said during her set, April, now 32, went to rehab and became sober at 24 years old. She then found herself working at a company that committed some number of unethical practices, and “decided to go on tour [and] see how it went.”
Both April and Bullen described music as a support system. For April, it’s how she stayed sober and subsequently found community. When she first started out, music was her way of centering herself, and she truly didn’t care about the money or fame. Now, with Apes of the State much further along in its musical career, the rehab center shows were a way to get back to her reasons for starting out in the first place. They offered a way to play music for herself again. No one at the rehab centers could scream every lyric, and she hoped that her songs would connect and inspire people in rehab as they had for her current fans. The sense of belonging all the musicians have found has helped them express anger and individuality, and feel less alone.
As April eloquently preached, there are “beautiful weirdos all across the United States. And Canada.”
Most attendees recognized Myles Bullen, a singer from Portland, Maine, who would be performing second. However, as the crowd filled in, they assisted opening act Lars and their Lilac Ukulele with setting up the equipment. Lars’s set began with a half-empty crowd, but they were “starting off with the slow ones … so they’ll be more of you as we go.”
Lars’s music was most similar to bedroom pop, a genre that traditionally consists of queer-identifying people with ukuleles. Lars’s music feels like part of the genre’s second generation, one of the many people who grew up on first-gen bedroom pop acts like Clairo, Beabadoobee, and Cavetown and are now pushing the genre further.
Lars used a looping pedal during their set, meaning they could live-record audio and loop it, allowing them to create backing tracks in real time. For some songs, they hit the body of their instrument for a boom or a thwack that made the songs sound like a full band. The lyrics, which Lars sang with the pizzazz and talent of a musical actor, were about finding and expressing emotions as one gets older. The crowd was infatuated, and contrary to normal behavior during a local opening act, listened politely and then cheered like animals. As Lars put it, while uncontrollably smiling, “it’s crazy to see such sad songs and such smiling faces.”
A break; then Myles Bullen set up their equipment. It was clearly a well rehearsed routine. They and Apes of the State have been on tour for two weeks, and they have it down. No one watched Myles, though. The kid with the kendama, now with his mom, who also had a kendama, was talking with Myles. They were probably family friends, but Myles is the type of kind person for whom everyone feels like a friend. As they gave the kid advice (“bend your knees” and “don’t let it spin”), the kid did it. The ball landed in the cup. The kid cheered. The crowd cheered. A deep voice from the back yelled “you’re awesome” and the kid beamed.
Bullen, like Lars, was hard to fit into a genre: their songs were a combination of punk politics and pop culture references told through ukulele sing-alongs and rap verses. All the while, a video played in the background — sometimes animation, sometimes footage Bullen themselves captured, such as a Toronto aquarium or a lightning storm from an airplane. The performance was equally dynamic. They ran into the audience, crowd surfing, placing the coat chair on stage and climbing atop it, their head almost scraping the ceiling as they screamed.
The crowd knew all the words. They shouted the choruses and filled in the backing vocals. The mid-set sing along involved everyone, including Bullen, sitting on the floor and singing the “kid songs” about the apocalypse and prison. (One song included the campfire chorus of “when this whole world burns, we’ll still be friends.”) The actual child, Bullen noted, was proof that it truly was an all ages show. No one hollered louder than the kid, still practicing his kendama.
Their set also featured New Haven folk-punk rapper Ceschi, who joined Bullen onstage for a song they co-wrote and released on Ceschi’s label Fake Four. Bullen described how they were forced to go to a Ceschi show by their friend, and despite complaining the whole drive there, ended up finding community. Because of that show, Bullen met April of Apes of the State, and eventually joined Fake Four, which Bullen described as a label for Ceschi’s “weird friends no one would give a chance.”
Bullen’s songs felt like a love letter to the angry teenager they didn’t fully leave behind. Their music seemed to rise from a general world philosophy: the world is fucked, the government is fucked, but we are all in this together, and let’s be good people.
Lancaster, Penn., band Apes of the State performed last. They never introduced themselves on stage, though their aura preceded them. Dan (mandolin and back-up vocals) had been assisting with tech and April (guitar and lead vocals) had been selling merch and chatting. During the performance, their hands were a blur of percussion and fingerpicking. During the more difficult numbers, they turned to face each other, their hands and sounds fused together into an angry blob of emotion. During the sadder songs, they loosened and the sound flowed over the crowd, never losing its intensity.
Their songs felt deeply personal. Even as a room full of people screamed the words alongside her, it felt more powerful when April shouted them. The songs were about making mistakes and learning, and the people who don’t get to. They seemed to contain snapshots of April’s life, including details about people only close friends would know or care about.
She described, as a kid, seeing a punk band and wanting to be in one — and now, she wanted to be that band for a new wave of kids. Any plague of gatekeeping and ask-a-punk was absent. Several audience members cheered when asked if it was anyone’s first show, and April encouraged everyone to say hi afterward.
That’s what makes folk punk special. The anarchism and nihilism mixes with a want for community and a general acceptance of all people. There was no big pop chorus about a generic toxic ex-boyfriend. April gave us songs about her life, and the meaning we found in it was ours to discover.