Cab Ellis at Bowery Ballroom: Loud enough to feel human again
Everyone feels the first-week blues when New York City comes back to life in January. But this week felt heavier, burdened with unsettling headlines — rising tensions globally and immigration raids at home.
The world right now doesn’t make much sense right now. And for many of us, music has always been a safe place. Bowery Ballroom became that refuge Friday night, with a mostly college-aged crowd packing the venue. For a couple hours we processed it together, guided (and protected) by Cab Ellis, local alt-rock heroes.
TORTURE AND THE DESERT SPIDERS
Torture and the Desert Spiders kicked off the night at Bowery, a project led by Brooklyn artist Anna Kunz. Leaning against an amp was a beat-up trash can lid that read “I ♥ TORTURE.” It was the perfect visual before the band played a single note. When they took the stage, the response from the crowd was immediate.
Fans danced along to Torture, a catchy mix I liken to UK post-punk fused with gritty NYC underground rock. There couldn’t have been a more fitting way to open the night.
NATIVE SUN
The next opener was Native Sun, a four-piece rock band from Brooklyn. With his leather jacket and a messy mullet, frontman Danny Gomez looked like he stepped straight out of the local scene a couple decades too late. On second thought, maybe he was right on time. I didn’t give the band a listen before the show, so I was very please with the fuzzy guitars and Danny’s snarling vocals.
Mid-set, Anna from Torture made her way front and center in the crowd. She climbed onto the stage and dove in headfirst, crowd-surfing at least twice by my count.
At this point, the room moved together as a one. The air was thick and humid, sweat dripping from our bodies. By the end of the Native Sun’s, Bowery Ballroom was primed for Cab Ellis to unleash its beautiful chaos.
CAB ELLIS
Some bands instinctively know how to blur the line between artist and audience, turning the crowd into part of the performance itself. Led by the unhinged, yet magnetic frontman Connor Abeles, the ensemble (yes, I counted at least seven bandmates) wasted no time delivering a set that felt like pure kinetic energy.
The band’s genre-bending sound lives somewhere between alt and indie rock, and pulls in the experimental elements of jazz and hip-hop. And, of course, a trombone and saxophone, simply because they can.
The jagged indie rock swirls into horns cutting through the distortion, before twisting into a rapper’s cadence to deliver a story in sharp, deliberate lines.
Scanning the room, I caught familiar faces in the crowd, including a handful of city photographers I’ve crossed paths with at local venues. Shoulder to shoulder, we documented this indescribable communal energy of the fiercely loyal crowd.
If you listened closely during the dramatic pauses, it sounded like the city during the morning rush: screams, laughter, and loud conversations. Then it all collides as the next song crashes into you. Like the Big Apple itself, a Cab Ellis show is messy, loud, and refreshingly human.
With a steady stream of stage divers and crowd surfers, the floor completely disappeared. At some point, the trombone became a casualty of the chaos. Beaten and mangled, the horn was raised above the band’s heads, then hurled into the crowd as a prize.
Outside after the show, I looked back at the crowd as they filtered out of the venue, and I paused to reflect. This was the emotional reset I needed at the end of this heavy week.
Maybe the world isn’t entirely broken. Sometimes it just needs to be loud for a minute.
CAB ELLIS SET LIST
Bowery Ballroom, New York, New York (1/9/2026)
Blue House Curb
Dogsittin’
Crumbs of the Crumbled World
Sure Fire
Just Like Napoleon
Roaring 20s
Impossible Sports
Upward You Go
You’re Too Far Along
New York Time
Biagio
Hammer
The East Coast Hold On
Bad Health (encore)
She Put That Man Over Me (encore)
