At last, some three months after planning to initially perform for a few nights in a converted warehouse in Queens, the fashionable British singer FKA twigs finally made her appearance in the outerboroughs, but this time under a highway in Greenpoint, the night before Pride. It was her first tour of the States since 2019 and visa issues had complicated her return stateside. Well, nevertheless. Now, she arrived on the top of a lineup assembled by Rayne Baron for LadyLand, the show that the longtime party promoter has been putting on every year to catch the Pride crowd since the late 2010s, initially in Bushwick, but now Under The K Bridge, the name of a public park the city rents out to promoters that is literally underneath the Kosciuszko Bridge. There was a big Turnover show there earlier this month. Last year, Baron’s lineup had notched a surprise appearance from Madonna and this year, Baron balanced out the twigs booking with a half-hour from Cardi B the night before. This was notable too. The Bronx rapper once played a showcase Baron put together in 2017, but hadn’t made any major appearances playing the city at all since the Hot 97 Summer Jam in 2023. Most everyone else playing the festivals were comparatively lesser-known. There was f5ve, a sharp Japanese girl group with a debut helmed by the Lady Gaga producer Bloodpop; there was COBRAH, a Swedish “BDSM-pop” singer; there was Pabllo Vittar, a prominent Brazilian singer and drag queen. “It has not been the best year,” Baron said when she took the stage on the second night. The politics and everything else of it all. Out loud, she read the popular Zoe Leonard poem, “I want a president,” famous these days for its appearance since 2016 near the High Line in Chelsea, painted along one of the walls of the Standard. 

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Photos taken by Andrew Karpan.