Downtown Boys / Pop Music Fever Dream

Downtown Boys have pushed relentlessly forward as an artistic and political project since their founding. Singer Victoria Marie and guitarist/singer Joey La Neve DeFrancesco first met at union meetings while working together at a hotel in Providence, RI, writing many of the band’s early songs about their organizing efforts and exploitative workplace conditions. The quintet is completed by saxophonist-synthesist Joe DeGeorge, bassist Mary Jane Regalado, and drummer Joey Doubek. Through years of creating and touring, Downtown Boys continued to grow as artists, musicians, and organizers. Now, Downtown Boys have arrived with Public Luxury on Sub Pop Records, an enthralling new record that keeps politics front and center while summoning the band’s most urgent and powerful sound to date.

“This record is bigger and more expansive than anything we’ve done before,” explained DeFrancesco. “In writing this music, I tried to get closer to the feeling and sound of our live shows, which is where Downtown Boys is best experienced. When we perform, the guitars, keyboards, saxophones, the singing and intros, and the crowd yelling along with us all blend into a beautiful, cathartic energy. We wanted these songs to carry the depth of that live experience onto the recording itself.”

The definition of Public Luxury falls very much in line with that of the title of the second Downtown Boys LP, Full Communism. Straight up, Public Luxury means, “everything for everyone.” It’s the stubborn insistence that a better world is possible, while fully recognizing the horrors we witness daily, and the individual and collective responsibility to resist the nihilism and hopelessness we all feel.

Victoria Marie asserts that Public Luxury means that, “We as the people have the power – and we will have it all. The ultimate burn to injustice is taking the dirt, the shards, the smoke of it all in the struggle for freedom and liberation — finding power in the mundane — I think that is the story to be told.”

Sentiments like “everything for everyone,” and “we will have it all” perfectly represent the cathartic, communal live experience this cadre of multi-instrumentalists create. These sentiments also encapsulate the inclusive, joyful fusion found in Downtown Boys’ sound: punk and indie roots mix with Latin traditions, drum machines blend with acoustic drums, saxophones both support and interject between riffs, and layers of synths blend with guitars, doubling or tripling melodies to create blankets of melodic texture. The amount of ground covered on Public Luxury can’t be overstated. Public Luxury’s opening song and lead single, “No Me Jodas,” is a massive track whose thundering drums signal the beginning of Downtown Boys’ new era. “No Me Jodas,” “Sirena,” “Viva La Rosa,” and the rework of “Mi Concha” by Malportado Kids (a project started by Marie and DeFrancesco) add to the already robust catalog of Downtown Boys tracks sung entirely in Spanish. Songs like “Yellow Sun,” with its twinkling vibraphone, as well as “Albuterol” hit with all the emotion and sophistication of Sam’s Town-era The Killers. The industrial punk breakbeat of “You’re a Ghost” is unlike anything the band has done. Anthemic punk songs like “Viva La Rosa,” “The City Begins,” and “Enemy Without” are reminiscent of Downtown Boys’ earlier music, while “Public Works” and “Public Luxury” sit awash in a dreamy bath of synthesizers.