The Bowery Presents

Kevin Morby – Brooklyn Steel – June 10, 20026

Sometime on Wednesday afternoon, Kevin Morby started posting to social media, imploring people not to change their plans to come to his show at Brooklyn Steel to watch the Knicks play game 4 instead. Whether he was serious or just being cheeky, Morby really shouldn’t have been worried. New York City has always turned out for him, Brooklyn even more so. His NYC fans know that tracks like “City Music” (which popped up halfway through the show) and “Harlem River” (which didn’t make the cut this time around), songs that were written in and are about the city, hit a little bit harder and sweeter at local shows. So, it was no surprise that the room was enthusiastically full when Morby and his band took the stage. 

That said, the current tour is promoting his latest album, Little Wide Open, which is explicitly about the middle parts of the country and the traveling in between them. The stage itself was adorned in sunflowers, a visual reference to Morby’s home of Kansas, aka the Sunflower State. But there was plenty of lyrical imagery as well in the first third of the set which drew exclusively from the new record, with songs like “Die Young,” with its recounting of memories in random middle-American locales and the “old cow town in the Bible Belt” in “Javelin.”

The music balanced the cross-country mood as well, Morby and his band exploring an impressive dynamic range from quieter lyric-centric passages building to massive swells of rock and roll, textures provided by flute, sax and violin in addition to electric guitars, bass and drums. Longtime bandmate Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) joined in at several points throughout the show, adding extra guitar zing to the rocking moments, like in “Rock Bottom,” and also providing a three-part guitar harmony effect with Morby and lead guitarist Liam Kazar on songs like “100,000” and that NYC-tribute “City Music.” 

To top off the New York City vibes, Morby brought out a local, Hamilton Leithauser, to sing “1000 Times” midway through. As the night went on, the Knicks score was not looking good (only temporary!), but the mix of songs from all phases of his career was a winner. The set ended up with “Destroyer” with Morby on piano and the band building from almost nothing to full crescendo and then ultimately the new release’s title track, singing “To be everywhere all at once,” the band and the crowd simultaneously in a packed club in Brooklyn and traveling to the quieter places more far-flung. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | instagram.com/dadarria

Out on summer tour, the Dave Matthews Band returned to Queens on Wednesday for a sold-out show at Forest Hills Stadium.

Photos courtesy of Joe Papeo | www.irocktheshot.com

Detroit rappers Babyface Ray and 42 Dugg rolled into the Meatpacking District on Tuesday night with their 4 the Trenches tour for a spirited headlining show at Racket.

(42 Dugg and Babyface Ray play The NorVa in Norfolk, Va., on 6/21.)

Photos courtesy of Marc Millman | www.marcmillmanphotos.com

Pete Yorn – Music Hall of Williamsburg – June 8, 2026

In 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Shrek dominated the cinema box office. Sadly, we will never forget 9/11. The first iPod was released and reinvented how we listen to music on the go. R&B and rock dominated the music landscape with Pete Yorn’s debut long-player, Musicforthemorningafter, surging in the charts. Starting from his 1998 working debut, Thenightbefore, L.A. producer R. Walt Vincent encouraged Yorn to rework the album away from its alt-country roots and toward the use of digital recordings. Musicforthemorningafter remains an indelible marker of the early aughts soundtrack, and rightfully, the New Jersey native celebrated its 25th anniversary with a tour that landed at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Sunday night.

Donning a trucker hat, the singer-songwriter confessed that it was his first time playing Music Hall and opened his solo acoustic set with “All At Once,” from his 2003 sophomore album, Day I Forgot. He surprised fans with a cover of the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” before getting down to the business of a 25th anniversary. The debut- album celebration felt much like an episode of VH1 Storytellers, in which Yorn told stories about the making of the songs on his seminal record, which he did not play in track order, but preferred a shuffled arrangement. Sharing how he recorded “Closet” in a studio that housed a black widow spider, many of the tracks were produced there. One not laid down in the “black widow,” “Simonize,” was tracked in the seedy midtown Times Square of the late ’90s. 

The set was peppered with treats from a prelude of Coldplay’s “Yellow” into “Sense” to “On Your Side” paired with an interlude of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” Recounting the story of signing with Columbia Records in 1999 (noting that the Knicks and Spurs were in the Finals playing each other then), Yorn played “Life on the Chain” for the A&R representative, Will Botwin, and was offered a deal on the spot. Closing the Musicforthemorningafter portion with his cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” he teased the cover with a snippet of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead.” 

Yorn’s engaging stories stretched his set more than two hours. They included an extensive encore of 2003’s “Crystal Village,” latest-single “All the Beauty,” from his forthcoming new album, “Elizabeth Taylor”off 2021’s Hawaii, and a cover mash-up of T. Rex’s “Children of the Revolution” with the Smiths’ “Shoplifters of the World Unite.” In the final moment, Yorn dedicated the last song, “Burrito,” from his sophomore album, to his late father. —Sharlene Chiu | @shar0ck

(Pete Yorn plays The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., on 9/10.)

Photos courtesy of Sachyn Mital | www.sachynmital.com

The New Zealand symphonic-pop Synthony’s musicians, vocalists and DJs lit up Terminal 5 on Friday night with reimagined electronic dance anthems and wild visuals.

Photos courtesy of Ken Grand-Pierre | www.kenamiphoto.com

English EDM producer-DJ Chris Lake kicked off three weekend shows at Under the K Bridge Park with what blurred the lines between a Friday night dance party and a Knicks watch party.

The Stay in Bloom festival triumphantly returned to Under the K Bridge Park on Saturday, highlighted by ILLENIUM and Dabin performing back-to-back to close out a stacked lineup.

Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @tobytenenbaum

Touring North America in support of his new album, Who Are You Really?, Los Angeles producer and DJ Le Youth brought his latest to Terminal 5 on Saturday night.

(Le Youth plays The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday.)

Photos courtesy of Elissa Mentesana | elissarosephotography.com

@elissarose15

Singer and multi-instrumentalist John Linnell and singer-guitarist John Flansburgh have been making sweet, melodic music as They Might Be Giants for nearly 45 years. They put out their 26th EP, Eyeball, in January, and their 24th LP, The World Is to Dig, in April. On Friday, they played the second of three nights at Brooklyn Steel.

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

@eatsdirt

@thesearenotphotographs

On Friday night Dillon Francis and Flosstradamus had everyone at Terminal 5 dancing into the weekend with back-to-back sets.

Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @tobytenenbaum

With a new album out today, Brooklyn hardcore rapper Young M.A rocked locally last night, headlining Music Hall of Williamsburg. 

Photos courtesy of Anthony Grant | instagram.com/gallerybytm

Brooklyn synth-pop singer-songwriter Grace Ives came home to close out the tour in support of her excellent third studio album, Girlfriend — which, according to the Guardian, “abandons caution in windswept, hyperdetailed songs that streak by like big city streetlights and shimmer with cosmic awe” — with a sold-out show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday night.

Photos courtesy of Adela Loconte | www.adelaloconte.com

Out on their biggest headlining North American tour yet, Melbourne, Australia, metalcore four-piece THORNHILL cut loose at a sold-out Webster Hall on Wednesday night.

Photos courtesy of DeShaun Craddock | dac.photography

L.A. dance-pop trio MUNA landed in Brooklyn on Saturday to launch a four-night record-release party, celebrating the recent arrival of the band’s fourth LP, Dancing on the Wall, “an unwavering celebration of pop,” per Clash magazine.

(MUNA play Music Hall of Williamsburg tonight.)

(MUNA play Roadrunner in Boston on 10/1-2.)

Photos courtesy of Andrew Pintado | @drooshotya

AllMusic calls French space-rock singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Melody Prochet’s fourth Melody’s Echo Chamber album, Unclouded, a “record that is just as impressively crafted as anything Prochet has done. That is high praise indeed, considering she's made some of the most inventive and pleasing neo-psychedelic-adjacent albums of the previous decade or so.” And on Friday night, Prochet and Co. dazzled Webster Hall.

Photos courtesy of Ellen Qbertplaya | instagram.com/qbertplaya