Guppy Gets Weird at Baby's All Right

by Eve Smith

I was the first to arrive, per usual. The Elvis poster by the bar stared at me, judging my compulsory punctuality which only seems to apply to live music. I watched as audience members trickled in to see Lunch Cult, the alt-rock/soul opener, and GUPPY, the indie-punk headliner known for their quirky lyrics and genre-bending ballads.

LUNCH CULT

I knew nothing about Lunch Cult before the show, but thanks to Instagram, I now know quite a lot. The duo are old friends who overcame their falling out in order to make music. Most of their songs were neo-soul fusion, while others leaned closer toward garage punk. There wasn’t much connective tissue between both extremes. Their set made me want to hear more from each song they played. I could tell their two-person set-up held them back from performing the music the way they heard it in their heads. That being said, when they played “Teenager,” I couldn’t help but bop around—that song proved that Lunch Cult is a punk group at heart, whether they know it or not. My advice to the band: embrace the noise.

GUPPY

The crowd packed in to see GUPPY. Most of the Los Angeles band hails from Emerson College, and some of their fellow alumni reconnected in the crowd. I’m an Emerson graduate myself—I knew J Lebow (vocals/guitar) and Marc Babcock (bass) in school, so when I found out they were not only in a band, but one that’s actually good, my jaw dropped. The rest of my former classmates at the show had seen GUPPY play before. When I mentioned the videos of their previous gigs on YouTube, someone cut me off and insisted they were much better live. I didn’t think the videos were bad—the hiccups could have easily been due to the audio equipment—but I was excited to see if they’d surpass my expectations.

GUPPY took the stage dressed in their own merch. Lebow and drummer Ian Cohen co-emceed the set, filling the space between songs with the unpolished banter that incentivizes me to see small-level bands live. Lebow called out band members between songs, teasing them with challenges like, “it’s your turn to say something.” At one point, Cohen interrupted himself mid-count off to say, “Wait, sorry, I forgot how it goes.” We all laughed. It’s refreshing when a band makes a mistake, especially when they don’t take it too seriously. He then went on to slay the beat once he remembered it.

They kicked off their set with the hard-rock anthem “Don’t Choke,” which opens with the lyric, “Hey audience, here comes the show / your favorite band that no one knows.” The meta acknowledgement of who and when we were alluded to GUPPY’s cheeky nature; this was a band who liked to get silly. The song’s repetitive guitar served as an entry point to their punk-inspired sound. Their next song, “Burrito,” unleashed their love for doo-wop. Babcock and guitarist Kabir Kumar harmonized with Lebow’s laments for a burrito they squeezed too tightly. The romantic lyricism and vintage vocals complemented GUPPY’s satirical snark, showcasing the band’s deviations from the punk genre that make their sound special.

The rest of their setlist (likely curated by Cohen, according to his “setlist-writer” credit on Instagram) featured hit singles and bops from each album. They surprised us with a new track, “Looking Right At It,” which I didn’t film out of respect for their release schedule. But, I must say… GUPPY fans are in for a treat. I wish they played “Aliens” off their third album Big Man Says Slappydoo, but at least I got to hear snippets of it during their soundcheck. I don’t care what the Elvis poster says—arriving early pays off.

GUPPY sounded surprisingly clean. Each of them nailed the hard breaks and slammed their respective instruments at the exact same time. Babcock’s dynamic bass complimented Kumar’s flowing guitar, resolving their individual pieces into a unified whole. Not a single one of them competed for air time. I love it when you can hear musicians listening to each other, and at this show I could see it too. GUPPY communicated through passing glances and mutual body language. After their intro to “I’m Fighting a 10 Foot Tall Nancy Pelosi,” Lebow and Kumar bounced from side-to-side in perfect sync. Babcock ran around the stage as he played, taking breaks only to face off with Cohen on the drums. Someone needs to sign that man up for Strava, because he must have clocked at least 2 miles on stage that night.

I anticipated Lebow’s performance the most. They were just as maniacal and spirited as their studio recordings suggest. At the end of “A Voicemail to the Mayor,” they screeched “you can’t make me” into the mic like a 5 year-old mid-temper tantrum. Later in the set, Lebow took a guitar solo that ended with them practically seizing on their back on stage. They rose up afterward and said, “If anyone got a video of that, post it with the caption, ‘the guitarist doesn’t need to be doing that much.’” This matched the self-deprecating theme in many of their lyrics, but in a way that makes bitter reflection fun and low-stakes.

And fun, my friend, is the best word to describe GUPPY live.

Sometimes I have to force myself to dance during a set, but this was not the case that night. I stood up front and swayed through the first song until the very last. Since ambivalence is currency in Brooklyn, the front of the crowd was spacious, despite the nearly sold-out event. But when GUPPY played “Smooth Jazz,” (my favorite song of theirs), the audience’s engagement skyrocketed. The crowd pushed forward when the song broke down into a ragtime bridge. Our kinetic apex hit when they played “American Cowboy,” and I couldn’t help but scream along to the chorus.

GUPPY’s show exceeded my expectations after all. Not because it turned into an impromptu college reunion, but because the band knows how to deliver on their promises. They’re clean, relatable, and buzzy, and they are far too talented for the size of their fanbase. After a successful East Coast tour, their next single release is in the queue. Could this allude to an upcoming album? I sure hope so. And I’ll blast it from the rooftops when it’s out. GUPPY’s originality is matched by their consistency, and it’s beginning to pay off. Soon, they will outgrow their “favorite band that no one knows” lyric and I will be proud to have seen them before their rise.

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