Photo Credit: Colin Hancock

CHEKHOV’S CURFEW! Night one, Lucy Dacus said she could play All Things Go attendees the festival’s namesake song, but “had to make it quick.” Night two, Doechii said from onstage, “what time is it? 9:53? I got seven minutes, y’all.” The specter of Forest Hills’ contentious — extensively contended, in fact — 10pm curfew loomed over the weekend’s proceedings, waiting to strike… 

Blondshell

Hey, Nothing, Joy Oladokun and G Flip opened up the festival’s last and markedly chillest day. 

Fans — the object — fluttered ahead of Blondshell’s afternoon set. The sun beat down hard on Forest Hills, and just before three someone passed out in the pit, the first of a handful that day.

Blondshell delivered exactly the set you’d expect from her, a standard, solid rock blessing. A sharp turn from the previous day’s pop extravaganza, Blondshell moseyed around a simply-set stage in trousers and a messy braid and hit her stylishly lethargic beats dutifully. Welcome to Cool Girl Day at All Things Go. Rousing revenge manifesto “Salad” brought some heat with foreboding drums signaling that Blondshell is chasing you down the hallway and will get you. She says as much: “I’m so scary, can’t stop having visions of following him, gonna make it hurt, gonna make it hurt.” She’s right, after her set I wouldn’t wanna mess with her — but would take a closer look at her recently-released second album. Bonus points for the awesome lyric “look what you did, you’ll make a killer of a Jewish girl.” 

Paris Paloma

Blondshell was relaxed, but her gritted-teeth, malevolent, biting sound kept a noticeably worn out crowd alert. Paris Paloma’s more rhythmic and flowy set shifted the gear from mellow to sleepy. Her slot and Blondshell’s should have been flipped. That said, lovers of Florence & The Machine will find a lot to love in Paloma, who marries warm 90s folk sensibilities with theatrical, almost gothic vocals. FFO: willowy billowing in the wind, Normal People by Sally Rooney, woodland fairies, Ben Platt’s vibrato. Props to Paloma for reminding the crowd of the NYC mayoral race registration date despite herself being from London, and also her generally very sweet and humble chitchat. Bonus points for yet more bare feet on the All Things Go stage. Girls rock. 

The Last Dinner Party

There’s something magnetic about Abigail Morris, frontwoman of The Last Dinner Party. Her theater girl contrivance sits forward on the palette, but noticing it doesn’t make it any easier to peel your eyes off of her while she flings herself gaily about the stage. She has the visibly performed yet unconcealably sincere charm of Lily James in Mamma Mia 2, a comparison which isn’t out of left field, actually, because The Last Dinner Party sounds just so much like ABBA — take ABBA out of Sweden and put them in Regency Era England. Put them specifically in the body of a young woman full to bursting with desire. It’s Pride and Prejudice, it’s the Brontës, it’s Dickinson — specifically the slick and saccharine Apple TV show about Emily Dickinson’s blossoming lesbianism. And like those works, it centers a plucky, cheeky, headstrong heroine elbowing her way through an erotics of manners. “I wish you had given me the courtesy of ripping out my throat,” Morris sings, swishing around her piecey white Pirates of the Caribbean dress. “I wish I knew you before it felt like a sin,” “Here comes a feminine urge,” “All I can give you is your name in lights forever, and ain’t that so much better than a ring on my finger?” That last lyric is from “Agnus Dei,” off their upcoming album From the Pyre out Oct 17, which judging from their performance and the released singles, is one to look out for. 

The Last Dinner Party is a vivid snapshot of a young woman coming into sexuality and a bombastic performance to boot. But it’s noticeable how centered that performance is on one woman as very self-satisfied with the force of her desire. Sometimes something feels uneven about stationary and level-headed band members playing around the frolicking Morris. When she riffs with her bandmates or turns a song over to them, though, balance feels restored. They’re lovely, one just wishes they would cohere. 

The group paused the show to throw on their screens a QR code attendees could scan to donate to medical aid in Palestine, one of few references of the weekend to the ongoing genocide (the previous night, Doechii cried, “there’s wars happening, there’s genocides happening”).

The Marías

Who knew the Marías had teenage diehards like that? The overwhelmingly-young crowd packed in shoulder-to-shoulder for the band. Honestly, kudos. The Marías are putting out some of the finest music of the past decade, and I figured their lush, dark, sultry atmospheres befitted adult epicureans, not the after-school set. The legions of teen boys in PR hats, fades and Atlanta Braves jerseys proved me wrong. Maybe the kids ARE alright!

And boy do the kids love María Zardoya. After a fifteen-minute delay for a twenty-strong crew to set up their elaborate brutalist concrete donut set (put a pin in that delay), Zardoya stepped onstage to Beatlemania-decibel fervor. She cut a fierce figure in silhouette before emerging in a stunning see-through black lace gown. Zardoya draws the eye in the way of a film noir femme fatale: she’s slinky, coy, serpentine. 

I was shocked to learn her vocals aren’t fussed with on the track at all — she really sounds like that; high, husky, hitting your ear like a jazz singer in a detective film or a whisper in a locked closet. The band’s cover of “Lovefool” that dropped into their “Care For You” was apt. Their own music is so trance-inducing that it’s possible not to fully digest the lyrics through headphones, but Zardoya’s emotive live performance illuminated the high melodrama of her writing. The Marías’ classy, expansive, smooth soundscapes create high-art sophistication out of the pedestrian romantic foibles of laying yourself at an ex-lover’s feet or frustration with an anxious partner. On the tracks, Zardoya can dissolve into the waves of the sea, reflected in the waves of the music. In person, she’s mythic but expressive. “…if in the morning, I am with you, and in the evening, I am there, and if it’s you that’s always waiting, kissing the flowers in my hair, why do you think I have another, when you have always been the one? Your paranoia is annoying, now all I wanna do is run,” she sings, at first making the case, then over-it annoyed, then circling back around to wry amusement. Her smiling eye-rolls stick in the mind. Her every move is intentional and streamlined, her affect sharp and stately, which allow her to chameleon delicately from warm magnanimity toward the house (Zardoya, who was born in Puerto Rico and writes songs in two languages, addressed her ample Latino crowd in Spanish) to arch playfulness to anguish. Zardoya’s is an off-road singular charisma. 

One is so taken with her they might overlook the ship she steers: a band and set designers that had this show, the last stop on the Submarine tour, down to a science. The Marías made the coolest choice at every opportunity — from fog and bubbles billowing around Zardoya during “Just a Dream,” to the circular set design that created multiple whirlpools in keeping with Submarine’s aquatic theme, to an unexpected and very chic trumpet solo. “Hush” was particularly insane, a sharp-edged knife of sensuality with geometric red and black lights pumping the stadium in rhythm with the song’s pulsing drumbeats. 

Bye for now, Marías. Hurry back!

Clairo

Obscene levels of Clairo shade from Forest Hills and All Things Go. 

Ahead of the show both on social media and at the top of her set, Clairo gushed about her excitement for the night. It was the mainstay singer-songwriter’s first-ever festival headlining slot. Cut to an hour later, amid fans yelling out for “Sofia” and “Bags,” Clairo’s mic and speakers cut out just before the beloved mouth-trumpet moment of “Juna.” The clock had struck 10pm at Forest Hills Stadium. 

The 101: after years of tensions, in 2023, the homeowners association Forest Hills Gardens Corporation asked a court to shut down the stadium, citing noise complaints and quality of life impairments. FHGC representatives said shows “send vibrations through residents’ houses for hours at a time,” increase traffic, public urination and litter. They asked that the venue’s show season honorarium be raised from $250,000 to $4 million. A judge threw out five of seven charges, and in fall 2023, Forest Hills implemented noise-reducing measures. ATG attendees might recognize some: this weekend many passed signs reading “YOU ARE IN THE BASS TRAP” and “These walls were specifically designed to minimize the sound that reaches our neighbors across the street.” 

Nevertheless, this March the FHGC refused to allow the NYPD to close the necessary private streets for shows, which in turn forced the NYPD to refuse to issue the necessary sound amplification permits for Forest Hills to put on their already-announced summer programming. Donovan Richards, Queens’ first Black borough president, accused the group of racist discomfort with the venue’s diverse crowds. In April, Richards announced that Tiebreaker Productions, the stadium’s concert partner, had agreed to hire private security to manage the streets in dispute and the NYPD “conditionally” approved. Summer at Forest Hills was a go — so long as it met “certain conditions, such as compliance with city noise code,” per a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams.

Into this firestorm danced sweet, polka dot clad Clairo on Sunday night. The Charm Tour is just as warm, fuzzy and delightful as the buzz parade made it out to be. The 70s conversation pit configuration, the shimmery cream curtain backdrop, the band chatting onstage to Wendy Rene’s “After Laughter” and beginning the show with a red wine toast. To some, Clairo is a puzzling headliner, as the vanguard of bedroom pop and an intimate, low-key presence. Major props are in order for her charting an alternate path to big shows. She set a dioramic scene then inhabited it for an hour, behaving less like a conscious star performer and more like a conduit for damn good music. She wore headphones, stood anchored to the mic and at every moment was visibly feeling the groove — tapping her foot, swaying her hips. 

The intricately orchestrated Charm numbers were radiant, as were retooled arrangements of earlier cuts: “Amoeba” especially was resplendent. “Are you guys ready to rock and roll?” Clairo introduced it, politely enunciating every word. And in what would have been headline news, Clairo brought out Shelly, the elusive four-piece band she’s in who have released just four songs across five years (for my money, their best is the new “Hartwell”). Her bandmates, also headphone-clad, jumped and danced excitedly around the stage. “Wanna say something?” she asked, tilting them the mic. “HEY GAY PEOPLE!” they yelled before scampering offstage. “They just come in like a tornado,” Clairo marveled. 

Then, halfway through “Juna,” her mic feed was cut. God forbid a woman mouth trumpet. Whereas Doechii and Lucy Dacus were clearly explicitly informed of the 10pm cutoff, Clairo kept singing for a minute before realizing something was amiss. She tapped the mic and turned around, looking for a crew member. One came onstage and whispered to her. Clairo appeared to try to negotiate, seeming to ask for two more minutes. That person ran offstage and Clairo tried to address the audience, but no sound came. She shrugged, but stood onstage defiantly. Finally, another crew member came out and held their hand to their throat, signaling nothing could be done. The stadium threw the floodlights up, to the crowd’s protests. Clairo hit the audience with a “get a load of this” shrug. Resigned, she came to the lip of the stage with her hands over her heart. The band lined up and bowed to the audience’s cries of love. Clairo then took to social media to … Clairofy. Sorry. God, I hated that. That felt poorly timed. I’m sorry, Clairo. 

She wrote in a post, “The festival cut us off. No idea why. Really sad we couldn’t do our big finish, more surprised they cut my mic mid song. Sad honestly doesn’t even begin to explain it — I’m sorry” and in a followup, “They didn’t tell us about the noise ordinance btw.”

What a major communication breakdown for a dearly beloved artist’s big headline moment — not to mention a bizarre, jolting and inconclusive moment on which to end a festival on the rise. Litigation, ladies. Dig it.