Been Stellar

Been Stellar is what you get when you leave the youth alone in a metropolis; they grow up. They make noise. Their songs are formed and lived somewhere on Broadway, on Hester, on 34th, in Union Square, on the bridge, in the gutter, and under your shoe. The trivial street scenes lipsticked by well-loved decades are fully recognized in Been Stellar’s hail of guitar tones and insistent lyrical earnesty. Crackly, bright, and distorted - stories of violence, love, and a new, un-glamorous, New York City.

Hailing from metro-Detroit, the beaches of Los Angeles, and Brazil by way of Sydney, Nando Dale (guitar), Laila Wayans (drums), Sam Slocum (vocals), Nico Brunstein (bass), and Skyler St. Marx (guitar) have positioned themselves at the glimmering rotten center of tonight’s rock and roll. Each member so distinctly themselves, it must be assumed that such a diverse and unlikely gang were drawn tight together in their first year of university by nothing short of serendipitous fortune and a shared, waggish sense of humor, reflected at the heart of their lyrics and hardened over years of shared experience in the city’s lavish rigidity and urban decay.

They are a band of friends - sharing, crying, fighting, and kissing - wreaking havoc together and laughing like how only the jaunty youth can afford to, truly bonded by an inexplicable yet palpable earnesty in their mission to create music that sounds like them. Their personal distinctiveness forms their crackling bleary sound, each member adding a tone and a limb, melding together their individual predilections into a melodic and raucous wash of audio that could only have ever taken shape in a specific time and space: here, and now.

Known for their brazen sincerity, Been Stellar’s arrangements come textured, swooping - pushing past you at a downtown pace and off to find a better night. The music isn’t of a mode or legacy, nor does it try to cash on threats of decadence and hedonism. The songs are of their own time and space, offering a New York City - Been Stellar’s New York City - the sounds of growing up young. Of Honesty. Of Manhattan Youth. The sound of these battered, stomped, beloved concrete streets.