Review: OK Cowgirl is larger than life at the Knitting Factory
THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN COWBOY IS UBIQUITOUS - His lore has permeated culture; he’s cast a long shadow over cinema since first appearing on black and white movie reels. And even now, he’s inescapable; our modern protagonists are molded in his image. The cowboy is adored but alone, confident but conflicted. He is a gun-toting, slick-talking paradox; he exists at odds with himself. Enter OK Cowgirl, a Brooklyn-based indie rock band, whose reimagination of the trope and its contradictions is every bit as grand as its forebearer.
On the night of OK Cowgirl’s EP release party for Not My First Rodeo, the Knitting Factory is studded with cowboy hats and inflatable cacti; a disco ball glitters overhead. The band— Matt Birkenholz on drums, Jase Hottenroth on bass, and Jake Sabinsky on guitar — are game; they’re fitted in crisp black tuxes. When frontwoman Leah Lavigne steps onstage, she’s decked out in white, wrapped in a leather jacket dripping with fringe. The cowboy hats are thrown into the crowd, inflatable volleyballs are lobbed around (one actually hits me square in the face). The whole scene is delightfully campy, a cheeky take on a Western.
OK Cowgirl kicks off the way any bona fide, capital R rock band should; by tossing off their jackets and kicking off their shoes. The band opens the show with “Don’t Go,” a thumping riot of a song, all thundering drums and crashing guitar. It’s a feel-good amuse-bouche before they dive into the EP.
The band faithfully plays Not My First Rodeo in order. The intro of “Unlost,” with its hypnotic bassline, undulates across the venue. Lavigne’s sticky-sweet voice cuts through the crackle of distortion. As she breathes into the mic, the crowd is transfixed; we dance, boots clicking against the wood floor like a stampede.
They chase “Unlost” with their latest single, “Her Eyes.” For this song, they’re joined by fellow local mainstay Colatura’s Meredith Lampe, and coproducer John Miller (who recorded and on produced the EP). On “Her Eyes,” Sabinsky creates something celestial with his guitar, the way his strums twinkle across the song. The live instrumentals come together like an orchestra, the band crescendos into a swell in the chorus. That melody rises from somewhere inside, deep within the ground, within your ribcage.
It makes sense that the song reverberates somewhere deeper, quieter, buried; it’s a song about wanting, about dredging up feelings that you’ve locked up deep inside. The repression that comes with having a queer crush can be debilitating, especially against the harsh glare of a society that Lavigne says “isn’t built for people like us,” It does seem slightly ironic that Lavigne, a queer woman of color, is the frontwoman of a band whose name likens straight white men with big mustaches and gauchos. She knows all five foot two of her doesn’t exactly evoke Clint Eastwood but finds something resonant in the mantra of the cowboy: “I’ve had to interrogate the world and how it treats people like me. I’ve had to navigate that the same way cowboys do— as outsiders.” She admits that it took her years to touch the journal entry that inspired the song; the world is all the better that she did.
If “Across the Room” stuns on the album, it’s a triumph live. It reads bittersweet: Lavigne sings about running into an ex and trawling through smaller, lost memories (“and i remember we were laughing/ it was my lips on your ear/ telling you those stupid jokes”). But tonight, it’s a celebration. The band folds tambourines into the live performance, injecting a brightness into the song. Shimmering above all the dreamy haze of the guitar’s is Lavigne’s voice. She is elastic, soaring from a low growl into a falsetto. She smiles into the microphone, beckoning us not to mourn the loss of intimacy, but rather, honor the beauty of that time spent together.
OK Cowgirl shines in their rock star pomp, but some of the best moments of the show happen when they allow themselves to unravel. Before “Deer in the Headlights,” Lavigne admits that it’s taken seven years to get the EP out. How she felt stuck, and that was okay— so if anyone in the crowd felt unsure with a job, a partner, a place, this song was for them. And the song plays like a hymn for the lost. The action of “going to the bar alone” becomes a meditation, a promise to yourself. On my left, a person in a stone-gray suit jabs his friend in the side and yells, “she’s talking to me!” their smile stretches above their N95 mask.
The hometown heroes cap off the night with some old favorites. “Get Gone” is a symphony of hazy guitars and a heartbeat of a drum. The band previews new material too, ranging from a glowering break-up anthem to a requiem for doomed relationship. “Nighttime Thinking” is a universe in a song, the sonic equivalent of driving down a moonlit street at night while your thoughts split the quiet of the dark.
OK Cowgirl caps the night off with a song called “Déjà Vu,” which they released back years ago when they were “Leah and the Lowkeys.” The crowd stomps along as the band wields their instruments like weapons, thrashing to flashing lights and cheers. It feels like a homecoming, an homage to their storied history as a band. Just another chapter in the mythos of OK Cowgirl, a band that’s just as larger-than-life as the characters to which they owe their namesake. As the show ends, Lavigne winks at the crowd, “you could say it’s not our first rodeo.” And it surely won’t be their last.
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