New York Money
One person, one room, and a tape machine told to lie a little.
New York Money is the skittering electro no-wave cabaret of Travis Sherwood
New York Money (NY$) is the skittering electro no-wave cabaret of cinematographer, photographer, and composer Travis Sherwood (b. 2002).
Your Dog Will Live Forever is a thumping cri de coeur from an unseen wave of skint youth who learned to hustle in lockdown New York nightlife. It veers from crunching, sweaty stompers to lush afterparty spin-outs, hinting at a gamut of influence from Liquid Liquid and LCD Soundsystem to Bush Tetras and Suicide.
"We were the lure for these rich lonely perverts to buy bottle service," says Sherwood, whose vocals equally evoke Mark E. Smith and Jarvis Cocker. Reflecting Sherwood's precocious turn as a Pecker-esque queer kink photographer, acidic lyrics reveal a hidden world of creepers, drugs, and lost kids offered as "impulse buys." Tracks like Bird surge with score-like dissociative drone before flipping into a furious, bell-driven PTSD breakdown. Touch Knives calls out the fake stakes of algorithm-fueled New York City party culture.
"These irony-pilled 16-year-old girls were all keen to become BRAT in gentrified Chinatown. I saw them led like lambs to the slaughter by ageless scene lurkers," observes Sherwood. "I, too, was one of those lambs."
With "Dimes Square" failing to yield much more than tales of abuse and clout-chasing, downtown now welcomes a surge of defiant, stripped-down acts. Your Dog Will Live Forever is at times the aching testimony of a trade-turned-fuckboy character seeking enlightenment after the lights go up. Sherwood seeks an antidote to the comedown.
Your Dog Will Live Forever is out now
