For Jay Som — a moniker for Oakland-based bedroom-pop artist Melina Duterte — who headlined WHRW’s Moefest on Saturday, performing on college campuses can be a surprise.
“College shows are really fun — it’s kind of a gamble, you never know what you’re going to get because they’re always student-run,” Duterte said. “I think it’s really cool because most of the time students directly request for an artist. This last year especially, we’ve gotten a lot of requests to play [from students].”
Moefest is both a festival and a concert run by members of WHRW and supported by other artistic student groups. Starting in the middle of Saturday afternoon, student organizations, including the Alpha Delta Phi Society and the Food Co-op, tabled outside the Student Wing as student bands and DJs warmed up for the headlining act. Like many other Binghamton University concerts, the headliner is selected based on a student survey; for WHRW this year, Jay Som returned a lot of interest.
It was clear during the concert that one of Jay Som’s greatest merits while playing live is the ability for their songs to disintegrate into a wave of lo-fi dissonance — a sharp contrast to how tightly each member of the band plays together. This benefits each song in dramatically different ways: For single “O.K., Meet Me Underwater,” the vocals and instruments blurred together to emulate the title; for others, like concert-closer “Baybee,” it allowed for a striking stop to a fast-paced song.
Duterte, who has two albums out (“Turn Into,” from 2016, and “Everybody Works,” from 2017), integrated songs from each record into the set — but the concert still managed to maintain cohesiveness.
“It’s usually never weird to mix in those old tracks, maybe because I write all the songs, they sound like it’s not too far off from each other — from ‘Turn Into’ and ‘Everybody Works’ — so it’s really fun to play those songs and mix it in,” Duterte said. “Mostly ‘Everybody Works’ songs because we are still on cycle to tour with that.”
Another evident strength in Jay Som’s performance was how conspicuous the band’s own enjoyment was. Banter aside, they play off each other’s musical cues incredibly well, and weren’t concerned about hiding their buoyant attitude during upbeat songs like “The Bus Song,” which is their biggest hit. Duterte hinted, “This next song is about transportation,” anticipating that the audience would assume what they were about to play, but then she had the band play an intro to another song. After cutting off the fake introduction sharply, Duterte began the solo intro to “The Bus Song” as her bandmates mimed each line behind her back.
Behind the scenes, station members of WHRW said they were relieved that the concert had gone off without a hitch.
“I think this is probably one of the best Moefests we’ve had,” said Jeff Goldberg, general manager of WHRW and a senior majoring in geography. “I can’t speak for the Moefests we’ve had before I was a student, but there were no technical issues, everyone was here on time and everyone really just enjoyed the atmosphere, it seems. It was a perfect weather day … so I really can’t complain about any of it.”
Goldberg reminisced upon Moefest 2016, which some upperclassmen may remember as the year that it was too wet for indie band Wet to play, causing the concert to be rained out before the headlining band could play.
“You go into [producing Moefest] expecting the worst to happen,” Goldberg said. “Like, it’s 40 degrees and there’s a thunderstorm and you’re going to kill someone, like the Wet show two years ago where it was pouring rain and we almost killed [Binghamton Sound, Stage and Lighting] because we fried all of their equipment. As someone who’s been putting work into this since September, I’m astounded by how smoothly this went.”
Jacob Levine, the music director of WHRW and a junior majoring in English, was responsible for securing Jay Som to headline and said he was similarly proud of the resulting concert.
“I’m very happy with the response that’s been to the choosing of Jay Som,” Levine said. “And now being at the show, which, if I may say so myself, was incredible … it seems like a lot of people enjoyed Jay Som as the artist, and there were a lot of fans there, a lot of people singing the words, a lot of people enjoying her onstage banter. I’m thrilled it went over so well.”