Photo Credit: Jenna Houchin 

Lilith Fair’s concerningly-online, Labubu-laden daughter is back: All Things Go festival returned to New York yesterday for the second year. 

The cult queer festival popped up in Maryland in 2014. In 2023 it expanded from one to two days and promptly went viral for its queer-and-women-oriented lineup: boygenius headlined night two, coming after the likes of Fletcher, Arlo Parks and Tegan and Sara. Fans dubbed the event “Gaychella” and MUNA welcomed the crowd to “Lesbapalooza.” In 2024, ATG added a New York weekend, and this year tacked on Toronto as well. 

The circuit’s tenderest festival kicked off its New York iteration at Forest Hills Stadium on Friday, rife with mother-daughter dates, early performers plucked from the For You Page, a nine-way wedding, post-Mormon lesbians galore, and a visit from a certain mayoral candidate. (and, for bonus points: more than one attendee in Ugg slippers) 

Maude Latour

Goldie Boutilier, Sarah Kinsley and out-from-Utah’s The Aces kicked off the day at noon. By 2:45, a crowd started to amass on the floor. 

Maude Latour took the stage looking fresh from Limited Too in a silver-sparkled cropped polo and stage shorts. The fit, kind of a girly take on Benson Boone’s thing, befitted her performance: hyperactive, girlish, the most enthusiastic competitor in the school talent show. Latour seems like she does a lot of shrooms. Her vocals were fine, her young fans in the pit danced like jumping beans and one or two hooks stick in the head, but otherwise her hour felt precisely like being at a mall in 2011: rainbow, hair tinsel, synthetics, teenage emo. (See: Latour leading the crowd in a dance for a song she’d released that morning, to the lyric “we just XO’d in the back of your car.”) Despite a full band, pre-recorded moments and vocals flattened the vibe. The set looked rougher as the day went on: very next act Rachel Chinouriri, another girl’s girl, brought into stark relief what was missing from Latour as soon as she skipped onstage. 

Rachel Chinouriri

A big step up from Latour to Rachel Chinouriri. The crowd doubled in the interim, and Chinouriri captured them immediately — or perhaps they loved her from the start. Her vocals took on a lovely whispery timbre live, especially fun in the context of rocking out, which Chinouriri and the band did beautifully. “My Everything” is the perfect afternoon festival song with its grooves and undulations, and even talky song “It Is What It Is” held focus. A former Sabrina Carpenter opener, Chinouriri is girlishly sweet, bordering on dorky in her chats to the audience —  talking about how “dumb bitch juice” is about tequila, which she tries not to drink anymore — but her performance was quite the opposite. Absolutely fitted up in a strappy multi-textile number, Chinouriri danced and moved and commanded the space, enveloping the crowd into her good times and bad. For the solemn side of her performance: see the title track on her 2024 debut album, “A Devastating Turn of Events,” about a cousin’s fatal self-administered abortion, which Chinouriri sings sorrowfully but evenly for a jazzy Raye-esque moment. For the uplifting: Isaac reveal! Chinouriri bait-and-switched the crowd by introducing her song “Can We Talk About Isaac” with a very sweet spiel about missing her lovely boyfriend Isaac while on tour — before bringing out said Isaac during the song. “Isaac debut!” she squealed. Isaac, for his part, ran across the stage hyping up the crowd for his girlfriend. Love their love! And love Chinouriri, a perfect fit for All Things Go: fashionable, diaristic, hooky and open hearted. A triumphant return for Chinouriri, who had to pull out of last year’s festival due to difficulty self-funding her tour. 

Gigi Perez

The consummate professionalism of the up-and-comer continued with Gigi Perez, who released her debut album this year, but performs like she’s been touring for decades. Her band, also cool cucumbers, were dressed in chic Americana: a silver medallion belt, gingham, a cowboy hat. Peering through their shades during the golden hour set, the foursome delivered undeniable rock solid folk rock. They never left the pocket, their mix filled Forest Hills beautifully and Perez glided from Nashville rasp to operatic heights, proving to her many new listeners that she’s got the live pipes. She closed with “Sailor Song,” an immaculate indie folk yearning anthem. The trance of that performance — with Perez visibly humbled, band visibly psyched and golden hour giving way to sunset — was what live music is about. Whereas Latour felt juvenile and Chinouriri, while excellent, is dining out on Girlhood, Perez & co brought a grounded, grown-up energy to the afternoon. The result was the stillness that comes from an audience trusting they’re in good hands. This set would fit at Lolla, at Bonnaroo, at Austin City Limits, at the rockist’s specialist festivals. Wherever she goes — Gigi Perez is not a set to be missed. 

DJO

Festival organizers missed a “Barbenheimer” opportunity separating day one and two headliners DJO and Doechii. DJOechii, anyone? No? On that note — DJO divided the house at ATG. Half of Forest Hills came in DJO merch. The other half jokingly insisted on pronouncing it “d’joe” all day. Each side likely left day one thinking themselves victorious. Which is to say: Stranger Things alum Joe Keery delivered a resoundingly mid penultimate set, which dozens of his devotees left immediately after, not bothering to stick around for the superior Lucy Dacus headline set. DJO’s music is the kind that Spotify really thinks you should hear — and sometimes it’s right! That “back in Chicago I feel it” song is nice, “Roddy”’s good and his newest album is cool in doses. What’s memorable about DJO music is the atmosphere it creates: a sort of defamiliarized nostalgia, a disorienting neon night drive you find yourself tearing up partway through. This could lend itself to a transfixing live show… but only DJO’s lighting designer seemed to think so. Keery himself came out in jeans and a tee, which rankled some audience members, but this festival could use more rock and sometimes that means low-effort Julian Casablancas drag, so. Therein lies the issue with DJO, though: Keery’s performance felt markedly low vibrational, especially for a headliner. Yes, apathetic, flat vocals are part of the post-LCD sound — and the 80s-y, B-52s-esque vocal effects were fun — but Keery’s presence felt lethargic. Especially in contrast to the saving grace of the set: the fantastical lighting design. During quieter songs, listeners even in the pit would get distracted and start chatting, before crashing drums and sweeping white floodlights swung in, at one point literally jumpscaring the distracted. DJO outsiders could at least hit their pens and enjoy the lights and beep-bop instrumental interludes and have a fine enough time. And that’s because the set wasn’t unpleasant by any means: though very muted, Keery’s delivery, flat and clipped yet full of feeling, faintly evokes Talking Heads and The Strokes, and the people really do love to be Back In Chicago. The problem was that a headliner slot, a fun enough discography and ardent fan buy-in gave DJO the conditions for an excellent set. Instead, Keery shrugged his shoulders and gave awesome lights, playing around on a DJ board and listlessness: in other words, a fine enough night at Bushwick’s Bossa Nova Civic Club.  

Lucy Dacus

While hoards of DJOvah’s witnesses (no?) left the festival grounds en masse, Lucy Dacus’s team set up her elaborate backdrop, an all-practical wall featuring convincing columns made of fabric and cutouts surrounded by baroque gold frames. What’s left to say about a Lucy Dacus set? She’s simply lovely. Her voice is velvety, her chat with the audience is just receptive enough to pick out and riff on the funny bits (during “hands above our heads, reaching for God,” the audience threw their hands up and Dacus curtly nodded and said “yep.” mid-lyric), her setlist deftly weaves her old standards (“Hot and Heavy”) into the new (“Modigliani”) into the deep cuts (“Addictions”). 

Well, Dacus decided to give fans and festival reviewers something to talk about. Midway through the show she gently prepped the audience to be nice to her special guests coming out during the next song. Once she launched into the tender-hearted “Best Guess,” nine couples walked onstage, followed by actress and “Ankles” music video star Havana Rose Liu, whom Lucy declared the flower girl of the impending festivities: the on-stage marriage of those nine couples officiated by Lucy Dacus. It absolutely ruled. “Love is so cool,” Dacus said. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.” The couples slow danced to the rest of “Best Guess” and walked offstage, “bona fide” married by their documents Dacus told the crowd she’d signed before the show. Dacus took to marrying couples at shows toward the end of her tour, partly as an offer of legal protection in a time of eroding queer and trans rights. It has the added bonus of both subverting and one-upping the celebrity-special-guest-mania gripping major tours. Yeah, the “apple” girl is fun, but we watched eighteen people get actually married.

But not so fast. Ahead of “Bullseye,” during which Dacus brought out musicians to sing Hozier’s part, Dacus invited out a different guest, to an absolutely thunderous reception from Forest Hills: New York Democratic mayoral nominee and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. A true Millennial rock moment that could not have possibly solicited more screaming and bleacher pounding from the young crowd. Mamdani expressed his hope for the city to look more like All Things Go: “a city where trans New Yorkers are cherished, where queer New Yorkers are celebrated and where each and every New Yorker can be the fullest version of themselves.” He went on with a wink, “And it has to be a city that all of us can afford. Whether you’re an artist or a dreamer or someone who works the night shift.” Mamdani concluded by announcing that ATG had partnered with Head Count and encouraged attendees to register to vote on their way out. “Who thought that Zohran was gonna sing “Bullseye”? I wish.” Dacus joked. Then she announced that her scheduled “Bullseye” guest couldn’t make it and offered the “hopefully fair trade” of singing solo and acoustic a song she “hadn’t played all year” and “probably won’t play again”: boygenius’ “We’re in Love.” Someone in the front row held up a sign that read “I’M CRYING.” “That was fucked up. I can admit that,” Dacus teased. She sailed from that high-spectacle middle third and into the home stretch with “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore,” which by now feels like a classic. At the top of the (obviously impending: there’s no way she’s not doing “Night Shift”) encore she admitted she had to make it quick — that’s because Forest Hills Stadium is embroiled in a long fight with its neighbors, who have brought noise complaints and bureaucratic holdups against the venue. Dacus was somehow the first ATG performer to cover the festival’s namesake, Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago,” in an absolutely haunting moment, and wrapped up with the famously thundering, building, screamed-along explosion that is the live “Night Shift” — finishing at 9:59, one minute before Forest Hills’ curfew. Turns out there’s plenty more to say about a Lucy Dacus show. If only our grandchildren could experience “Night Shift” live. Kudos to an indie legend. 

Set list:

Hot and heavy

Ankles

First time

Modigliani

VBS

Talk

Brando

Best Guess

Addictions

Big Deal

Limerence

We’re in Love by boygenius

I don’t wanna be funny anymore

Lost Time

Forever is a Feeling

Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

Night Shift