Youth Signals Chemistry Is Undeniable At Palisades

I have to say, I’ve been to a lot of concerts lately and most of the bands have been pretty good, even great, but only certain bands make me feel something special. Monday night, after they toasted with a round of shots on stage at Palisades, Youth Signals accomplished that.

Lead vocalist of Youth Signals, Brock Bodell, curated a rocking line-up of some highly underrated Brooklyn-based bands.

Thermite kicked off the night with some great hard rock beats and howling screams that caused their fans to throw underwear on stage as a token of their affection. The Unders were up second with a gnarly garage rock sound and a drummer who had pretty stellar facial expressions. Your 33 Black Angels ended the show with a pretty sweet psych-pop-rock performance with the hidden treasure of a guy playing what looked like an African drum throughout the set.

The standout of the evening though had to be the dreamy psych-rock sounds of Youth Signals. The current outfit of the band has only been together for six months but they already put out an EP in October called 1997 and have played live about four times since the new year.

They played all the songs off their EP including standout “Hey You,” as well as other songs in their repertoire, including “Ride” and, my favorite of the night, “The Stag.” “The Stag” starts off a bit moody and slow but by the middle of the song the entire band was playing as hard as they could. Bodell and bassist Zak Engel let out simultaneous screams lasting about ten seconds hypnotizing the crowd as they segued into a powerful jam session.

Throughout the whole set, so many different adjectives were going through my brain as I was trying to figure out how to describe Bodell’s voice. The best thing I could come up with is that his voice almost had a Dracula kind of tone to it mixed in with your typical alt-rock vibrato. It gave me chills.

Even though a few songs in, Bodell said he was struggling with loosing his voice a bit, (“Sometimes I just go too hard trying to impress people,” he said) it was unnoticeable and actually added character to the already impressive performance.

Throughout their set, the band danced around together on what looked like a dentist office-esque carpeted stage, feeding off of each chord progression and drumbeat. Their chemistry was undeniable and it’s clear they’re a band to look out for.

Article by: Merissa Blitz