Downtown Boys (us) + Prise Rapide + Antimoine

Prise Rapide at Le Chinois

\* Downtown Boys (NYC, USA)

Union-driven punk to stand together

Since their formation, Downtown Boys have pushed forward with unwavering determination as both an artistic and political project. Singer Victoria Marie and guitarist/vocalist Joey La Neve DeFrancesco met at union meetings while working together in a hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. They wrote many of the band’s first songs around union organising and exploitative working conditions. The quintet is completed by Joe DeGeorge (saxophone/synth), Mary Jane Regalado (bass) and Joey Doubek (drums). Over years of touring and three critically acclaimed albums, including “Full Communism” in 2015 and “Cost of Living”, their first album on Sub Pop in 2017, Downtown Boys have continued to grow as artists, musicians and organisers.

Today, the band returns with “Public Luxury”, a captivating album that keeps politics at the heart of its message while delivering their most urgent and most powerful sound to date. The meaning of Public Luxury lies very directly in that of their second album’s title, Full Communism. Put simply, “Public Luxury” means: “everything for everyone”. It is a stubborn affirmation that a better world is possible, while fully acknowledging the horrors we witness every day, and the individual and collective responsibility to resist the nihilism and despair we all feel.

“Public Luxury” was co-produced by DeFrancesco with sound engineer and longtime Downtown Boys supporter Seth Manchester (Lambrini Girls, Lightning Bolt, Model/Actriz), at the studio and art space Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

▶︎ https://downtownboys.bandcamp.com/

♫ https://youtu.be/h46HG_Hxy54?si=ncT5TkHg55yQWkj2

\* Prise Rapide (Paris, Montreuil, Pantin)

Three notes, a ry