For his Monday night NYC concert, it might be more accurate to say Max Frost stormed the Bowery Ballroom than to say he performed at the Bowery Ballroom.
Promoting his new album Gold Rush, but more importantly coming off a tour with 21 Pilots that saw him play Madison Square Garden, he brought that arena show swagger and spectacle to the far smaller venue. The Bowery Ballroom is down and dirty (and just blocks away from the former site of the most down and dirty NYC venue ever, the legendary CBGB’s), and definitely one of the more intimate venues in NYC. But Max Frost was totally polished pop, with a full lighting set-up, strobes, props and smoke machines.
He’s also a one man band, bouncing between bass, guitar, drums, keyboards and looped tracks. More laid back on his album, the beats positively exploded live. There were plenty of frenetic songs like “Paranoia ” and “Money Problems” but surprisingly he really shined on some of the slower songs like “Eleven Days” which is an absolute burner. Overall it was easy to get into it and sing along, with lyrics that name drop Freddie Mercury and Paul McCartney and consistent invites for the audience to join in. Opening act Upsahl and her band joined him during the encores for a version of Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” that didn’t really take off compared to the energy and inventiveness of his original material, but he closed with the absolutely soaring “Good Morning.”
Above all else, Max Frost put on a show, going the extra mile with his dancing , drumming(while standing up) and breaks to chat with the audience. That the songs are so immaculate and not bland pop is the icing on the cake. The only down side, if you could call it that, is that there really should be nothing holding him back, and if he takes off it’s doubtful he would play a venue this size again. An artist like this would be fun to see even from the cheap seats at Madison Square Garden, but it can’t compare with seeing the showmanship up close at a smaller venue like this. See him now on this tour and tell people later you saw him before he got big. Gold Rush is streaming now.
