THE SPACE ON the Bowery, next door to a parking lot and normally empty, smelled liked chopped wood and electrical wiring. There were pieces of lumber strewn about the room, functioning as stools. Fake moss dangled from the ceiling. The light was dim, and synthetic fog hung in the room, making the air thick. A hundred bottles of gin lined the back wall.
The guests started to show up early. Hendrick’s, in a last-minute twist, posted an invitation for the event on its Web site. Mr. Granik and Ms. Smeyne rejected all of the RSVPs in an email blast the day before, but a lot of people the two did not want there showed up. They were working the door.
“It’s like this at any party,” Ms. Smeyne said, rolling her eyes. “Everyone has some excuse. Everyone has their story.”
But Mr. Granik’s dreams of perfect capacity were not compromised. The room was filled but comfortable. Julianna Barwick stood behind a table on the stage with a looping machine, making live samples of her vocals and playing them back, creating an orchestra out of her voice. The crowd, growing increasingly intoxicated, switched back and forth between states of transfixion and indifference.
Thin and striking, Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent, looks like a Chanel model, even when she is tuning. With herself on guitar, she was accompanied by a keyboard player and a sampling machine. Half-smiling with her eyes closed, Ms. Clark hunched over her instrument, beating it with her palm and stomping her high heels on the small stage. The room was small enough that the audience could hear Ms. Clark’s fingers move across the guitar strings, sometimes better than they could hear the instrument itself. Appropriately, she played “The Party,” from her 2009 album Actor. “I’m keeping my eye on the exits,” she sang, “I’m steady now.”
With a ringing out of feedback, Ms. Clark attempted to hit a button on her sampling machine to turn it off. But she missed and knocked the machine off of its stand. She flashed a frightened look, then caught the contraption in midair. She turned it off, and her set was finished.
“I would like to preemptively thank you, Hendrick’s Gin, for my hangover tomorrow,” Ms. Clark said. That’s the thing about parties. There is always the morning after.
mmiller@observer.com
