Downtown Boys (US)

Downtown Boys
Syndicalist Punk to Stand Up to It (NYC)

Since their inception, Downtown Boys have advanced with unwavering determination as an artistic and political project. Lead vocalist Victoria Marie and guitarist/vocalist Joey La Neve DeFrancesco met during union meetings while they were working together at a hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. They wrote many of the band's early songs about union organizing and exploitative working conditions. The quintet is completed by Joe DeGeorge (saxophone/synthesizer), Mary Jane Regalado (bass), and Joey Doubek (drums). Over years of touring and three albums praised by critics, including Full Communism in 2015 and Cost of Living, their first Sub Pop album in 2017, Downtown Boys have continued to develop as artists, musicians, and organizers.

Today, the band returns with Public Luxury, an album that keeps politics at the center of its message while drawing on, to date, their most urgent and powerful sound. The definition of Public Luxury sits directly within the frame of the title of their second album, Full Communism. Simply put, Public Luxury means: “everything for everyone.” It is the stubborn assertion that a better world is possible, while fully acknowledging the horrors we observe daily, as well as the individual and collective responsibility to resist the nihilism and despair we all feel.

Public Luxury was co-produced by DeFrancesco with longtime Downtown Boys sound engineer and supporter Seth Manchester (Lambrini Girls, Lightning Bolt, Model/Actriz) at the Machines With Magnets studio and arts space in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

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