Life’s Better with a Little ‘Girl Noise’
New York’s new mini music festival, for girls, by girls.
Festivals come in many forms. Girls have many faces.
I took an Uber to Bushwick on a rainy Sunday in June with little time to spare. The inaugural Girl Noise festival was kicking off at the Sultan Room, but I was stuck in a Honda CR-V watching my driver meander through gridlocked side streets. I’d made this trip to the Sultan Room so many times, and could never have predicted sitting in standstill traffic. The driver and I exchanged sighs. I compulsively checked the time.
The traffic source remained a mystery until I rolled down my window and heard Elvis Crespo playing from a street-side balcony. Creeping closer to the venue, the streets jumped with people garbed in red, white, and blue—not in celebration of American freedom myths, but in celebration of America’s only remaining commonwealth: Puerto Rico. My mounting exasperation melted into a wave of vicarious pride. Attendees of the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade flooded the streets with delight, and I patiently rode the sea of their sounds to the Sultan Room.
There was no better way to arrive at Girl Noise than with the noise of another festival, another freedom, already in my body. I quickly ordered a gin & tonic and found a comfy spot to stand for this seven-act mini fest. Before the first act, Girl Noise’s founders took the stage, namely Simone Lipkin, to express gratitude for the teeming crowd and acknowledge the festival’s manifesto, which declares that “something radical happens when girls come together to create noise…We believe that noise is essential to bringing awareness to the current political climate and societal structures rooted in misogyny.”
All seven acts—Imani Graham, Storey Littleton, Zipper Lips, Sophia D’Angelo, Simone and the Girls Upstairs, Laura Elliot, and Massie—made good on this mission, and not for abiding by shallow “girl power” platitudes. Rather, each artist sounded out girlhood in their own way, whether through squealing rage, dulcet tones, or free-falling melodies. The noise of the night accumulated into the shape of our shared girlhood: a long-headed chimera with many faces and desires, loosely defined by gender, and greatly defined by the acuity that comes from following a feeling as deep as it can go.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Imani Graham
Imani Graham opened the show to open our hearts. She sang of sapphic girlhood in the form of love and heartbreak—just her and a guitar, feeling out the empty spaces that a lost lover leaves behind. Graham was remarkably earnest, contagiously so. Even a hardened heart (mine) couldn’t withstand her piercing emotional clarity. She carried in her voice a gratitude for all feelings, even the uncomfortable ones. As she played “Bitter Pill,” her standout breakup song, the crowd filled and settled into the night of the girl.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Storey Littleton
Storey Littleton and her bassist followed in and awoke the crowd (adorned in cute, coordinated Tyler McGillivary swan outfits) with a playful rehearsed bit to keep us engaged while their bandmates assumed their positions. Littleton’s keyboardist was last to settle into his seat, but blissfully waved the Puerto Rican flag as he did so. After this transitional commotion, Littleton began plucking her guitar, and her name’s meaning immediately came into focus: she is a storyteller of the folk Americana tradition. A native of Woodstock, New York, Littleton’s easy sound honors the great art of lyrical longing that beats at the heart of American folk music, and perhaps girlhood too.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Zipper Lips
Zipper Lips’ lead singer then took the stage, removed the mic from its stand, and proclaimed, “We do not write a lot of love songs, but we do write a lot of hate songs. F*ck TERFs, free Palestine, and happy f*cking pride!” An electric guitar screamed alongside the cheering crowd as Zipper Lips unleashed their irreverence upon us. Their frontwoman rolled around on the ground, provoking us into a crescendo of rage. Zipper Lips had all the raw ingredients of a classic riot grrrl band—armpit hair, kicking, screaming, the threat of chaos—requisite for a night of girl noise.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Sofia D’Angelo
Sofia D’Angelo, one-sixth of bedroom pop band MICHELLE, quieted the room. She sat confidently alone on stage with her guitar and a crystal clear voice that pooled resonantly into the space. D’Angelo’s sound called me back to the part of my girlhood washed in turn-of-the-century future-nostalgia, characterized by sleepovers, password journals, and trips to the mall. Her reverence for this era of girl-pop became clear with her wistful cover of Anna Nalick’s “Breathe (2AM).” It also shone through in her original song “Chloe Showed Me,” which she wrote in collaboration with singer-songwriter Jensen McRae, about a transformative friendship in girlhood. As D’Angelo sang—“Chloe showed me I was real”—I wondered what we, as girls (for all who identify with the term), can only witness in and for each other.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Simone and the Girls Upstairs
Girl Noise co-founder, Simone Lipkin, and her band took the stage, channeling some of Zipper Lips’ raucous energy, but with less refusal and more wanting—wanting to be like other girls, wanting not to be like other girls, wanting to just be a girl. But all of this yearning still had a rebellious spirit. It was really about wanting things on your own terms. At their core, Simone and the Girl Upstairs are angst-pop with a flair for sampling rock, punk, and folk sounds. And with their strong themes of desire, each song mounted into a delicious emotional renegade.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Laura Elliot
Laura Elliot has big feelings. And it was captivating to watch her subtly lose herself in them. She performed “Stages” from her 2022 album People Pleaser, a song that she said is about the stages of falling in and out of love. Elliot’s emotions were so close to the surface that you could see her face, body, and guitar flit harmoniously through the seasons that love holds. With a three-piece band behind her and occasional vocal assists from Storey Littleton and her bassist, each song sounded full and deep, just as girlhood is meant to be.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GIRL NOISE / SHOT BY CAMILLA FRENCH
Massie
Massie is hard rock meets power pop. The type of band whose music you’d play on Guitar Hero. A band that might spawn if Flyleaf and The Cardigans had a baby. A band that might score a scene of Lindsay Lohan haphazardly applying make-up in a train station bathroom (iykyk). They dove headfirst into their set, wasting no time. The second guitarist had an elegant head bang, the drummer, a crisp intensity, and the lead singer, an unflinching readiness for the moment. Massie made me want to be present and alive, a closer befitting this first-of-its-kind festival.
All proceeds from Girl Noise went to Girl Be Heard, an arts non-profit for girls. Follow Girl Noise on Instagram @itsgirlnoise to stay up to date with all these artists and more!
