Noise Pop Festival is less a festival than a concert series spread out over about two weeks and more than a dozen venues across the Bay Area. Now in its thirty-third year, it remains one of the best, most eccentric assemblages of live music in the region.
One of the things that makes Noise Pop special is that there’s no marathoning six acts while wearing a diaper to maintain the best view, or spending half a Benjamin on sustenance, or hearing the faint din of five other acts simultaneously performing here.
On Saturday, Gazetteer SF checked out two of our favorite acts. Here are our scene reports.
Sun Ra Arkestra at The Chapel
Sun Ra famously said that “space is the place,” but for fans of the late experimental jazzman’s oeuvre, The Chapel on Valencia Street was the only one to be at.
It was my third time seeing Sun Ra Arkestra. The first was their insane set at a children’s puppet theater during a one-off musical festival in Oakland’s Fairyland in 2023; the next was part of a three-night stint at Great American Music Hall in 2024. Each time better than the last.
Sun Ra (1914-1993), the mystical and mythical early pioneer of free jazz, founded the Arkestra in the 1950’s; he and his musical disciples were among the first to employ electronic instruments including synthesizers and have toured the world many times over. The current band, a fluid dozen-plus lineup of musicians helmed by 102-year-old Marshall Allen, has played venues including the Kennedy Center and Radio City Music Hall.
Thirteen musicians packed onto the small stage in their iconic sequin uniforms, part-Ancient Egyptian and part-extraterrestrial, and played a spectacular two-hour set that oscillated between big-band swing, classical jazz, space-age free jazz, be-bop, and chanting. They were cooler than cool.
With over a hundred albums to pull from, no two nights with the Arkestra are the same; this made me feel especially lucky to hear one of my all-time favorite songs from 1979, “Springtime Again,” and all the better to see people around the venue, their eyes closed, singing and softly swinging along. The Arkestra ended the night with their “We Travel the Spaceways,” as they often do, chanting and dancing through the crowd. The great saxophonist Knoel Scott, who joined the Arkestra in 1979, led us through the vocals: “I know I am a member of an angel race. My home is somewhere there, in outer space.” – O.P.
Jay Som at Gray Area
Jay Som seems at ease at Gray Area on Mission Street, but also here in San Francisco. The Brentwood (East Bay, not LA)-raised musician born Melina Duterte, who now calls LA home, seems pretty game to come back to the Bay whenever the occasion calls for it.
Why wouldn’t she? She’s home. (A few songs in, someone yelled “Brentwoooood!” She shouted back, “Hell yeah!”) In the years since she last toured off an album, her songs and live performances have felt increasingly muscular. In particular, the emo-pop gem “Float” (featuring the great Jim Adkins) did what it said on the tin, and subsumed Gray Area like incense smoke.
Older, more subdued cuts like “Tenderness,” a highlight from her second album Anak Ko, grooved with authority. A full, five-piece band helped, as did the experience of touring with boygenius. Whatever it is: The show felt bigger, sprawling, and songs new and old are better for it.
Noise Pop is familiar territory for Jay Som; her first Noise Pop show (and the first time she performed solo under her stage name) was in 2015, in between sets by Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. (I was at that show; it was incredible.) “Do you love KEXP?” Duterte asked, a shoutout that inspired the crowd to chant “Cheryl Waters!” in honor of the station’s midday DJ.
The last group chant of the night took place during “The Bus Song,” an ode to local public transit (probably Muni, perhaps AC Transit), that had the crowd shouting, “I like the bus!” – J.B.
