Concert | Up-and-Coming Bands Play in the Park

Up-and-coming bands perform at the annual showcase

Bound by circumstance, identity, and creative spirit, three trans multi-instrumentalists founded Thus Love in 2018 in Brattleboro, Vermont. But the shared experience of Echo Marshall, Lu Racine, and Nathaniel van Osdol runs much deeper, tracing its roots to poor, rural towns where it was difficult to find communities to call their own. That feeling of loss and solitary longing has also, paradoxically, cemented their powerfully close connection in THUS LOVE. The band lived together in a one-bedroom apartment above downtown Brattleboro during the entire recording process of their debut album, Memorial, with Marshall cordoning off a room to build a studio from scratch.

Psymon Spine’s origins date back to Noah Prebish and Peter Spears meeting in college and finding common ground in their artistic aims: “We wanted to make something that was experimental, but also accessible and satisfying,” Prebish states while discussing the thrust of the band’s origins, citing influences like Talking Heads and Os Mutantes along with the rush of the NYC dance scene. Eventually, Brother Michael joined Psymon Spine, as the trio hashed out the demos for what would become their debut, 2017’s ‘You Are Coming to My Birthday’.

Katy Kirby is a songwriter and indie rock practitioner with a writerly focus on unspoken rules, misunderstandings of all kinds, and boredom. Kirby was born, raised, and homeschooled by two ex-cheerleaders in small-town Texas, where she started singing in church amidst the soaring, pasteurized-pop choruses of evangelical worship services. After high school, Kirby moved to Nashville, where she managed to graduate college with a rapidly expanding circle of artistic allies, an amorphous collection of leftist beliefs, and a few handfuls of songs. After a series of painful failures to complete a record that reflected the temperament of those songs, Kirby finally turned to dear friends and co-conspirators to form a band capable of constructing a satisfying full length.