NYC Anti-Folk
The Sidewalk Café songbook: naive on purpose, honest by force, taped on whatever was lying around.
What you're really asking
Anti-folk is folk with the varnish removed: songs that sound like diary pages read aloud at an open mic, where sincerity and jokes aren't opposites.
Where it sits
Born around Lach's Antihoot open mic at the Sidewalk Café in the East Village in the nineties, the scene broke out when The Moldy Peaches' homemade duets charmed 2001's garage-rock moment.
Jeffrey Lewis drew comics into songs, Kimya Dawson made whispered confession a style (and later a Juno-soundtrack phenomenon), and Regina Spektor took the piano wing to theaters.
The scene
Who: the Sidewalk regulars — Lach's lineage, the Peaches' orbit. What: first-take recordings, rhyme-dense lyrics, childlike melodies with adult bruises.
How it works: CDRs and tiny pressings are the native formats; early Rough Trade and 8th Street pressings carry the collecting weight.
The leading records
The Moldy Peaches
The Moldy Peaches
2001
The scene's accidental hit — bedroom duets in bunny suits.
Jeffrey Lewis
The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane
2001
Comic-book realism, sung — the thinking end of the open mic.
Kimya Dawson
Remember That I Love You
2006
Whispered mantras that later soundtracked a generation's Juno.
Regina Spektor
Soviet Kitsch
2004
The piano prodigy wing before the big rooms.
Adam Green
Friends Of Mine
2003
Croon and absurdity — the Peaches' other half solo.
Oddballs
Keep digging
- What was the Antihoot?
- How did Juno change Kimya Dawson's catalog?
- Where did anti-folk's second generation go?