Lily Randall

What’s the best remedy for the Sunday scaries? While some swear by ibuprofen and water, Melt, a New York-based band, offered Bowdoin’s campus a unique Sunday remedy this past weekend: high energy, indie-funk pop songs about falling in and out of love, the memories we do (and don’t) keep and growing up in New York City.

Following IDK’s concert last Friday, Melt rounded out the College’s Spring Concert weekend with a mid-afternoon, Sunday performance on Osher Quad. Donning space buns and a t-shirt that read, “TI-83, the most iconic graphing calculator of all time,” lead singer Veronica Stewart-Frommer was jazz personified, delivering a high-energy performance ripe with sparkling vocals and an effortless range. Keyboardist and vocalist Eric Gabriel teamed up with Stewart-Frommer to create seamless harmonies when he wasn’t leading songs such as “Stupid in Love” and “Hours.”

“My favorite part of their performance was the way that the band was interacting with the crowd,” concert attendee Colleen Doucette ’24 said. “I’d heard one song called ‘Stupid in Love’ before the concert. I talked to the band before the show and told them it was my favorite song, so the guy who sings the song, while he was singing, looked at me and smiled, and it was a really cute moment.”

The band primarily played songs off of their new EP, West Side Highway, but older favorites such as “Sour Candy” made their way onto the setlist, too.

Melt’s performance was enthusiastically received by the students in attendance, even though the band was missing saxophonist Nick Sare, a Columbia University student who skipped the concert to write a paper for class.

“This is our first time playing without Nick in five years, and we miss him,” Stewart-Frommer told the crowd.

Sare’s absence becomes more understandable when considering the concert was scheduled on short-notice; Melt wasn’t officially slated to perform at the College until less than a week before the gig.

“It was incredibly last-minute. Probably last Monday I was trying to gather some dates that would work for them, and we realized there was only one date that would work, and it was that Sunday,” concert organizer Danny Little ’22 said.

Little, who first heard Melt perform in early spring of 2020, has been trying to get Melt to come to Bowdoin for over two years. Between Covid-19 restrictions and a lack of funding, Little’s efforts were stymied at first. However, WBOR, the Bowdoin Music Collective and various College Houses scraped together enough money to hire the band.

Between rapper IDK’s concert on Friday and Melt’s jazzy pop on Sunday, students had a diverse array of live music to listen to this weekend.

“You can only party so hard in Smith Union,” Little said. “This was a wholesome, Sunday afternoon concert.”