Brooklyn's Andy Suzuki and Kozza Olatunji-Babumba (of Andy Suzuki & The Method)
 have been making music together for nearly a decade, but now with their third full-length album, The Glass Hour, a creative friendship has flowered into a formidable musical force. The half-Japanese, half-Jewish Suzuki and hand-percussionist Kozza (grandson of percussion legend Babtunde Olatunji) first garnered wider attention with their buoyant, organic folk-pop album, Born out of Mischief, and soon found themselves opening for names as large as Ringo Starr, Eric Hutchinson, Joshua Radin, Marc Broussard, Delta Rae, and Tyrone Wells. Fans fell hard for their combination of a "velvet voice" (NPR) and their “deadly way with melody" (TimeOut New York).

Their sinuous songwriting, which curves into eddies and unexpected shapes at every measure, is steadied by Andy's impossibly dulcet vocals, that carry us gently through as the songs toss and heave. The Glass Hour keeps all these curves and fleecy vocals, but no longer wants the limits of the folk-pop label. Instead, Andy and Kozza are aiming for nearly every place on your radio dial. There's tinseled RnB ballades like Shelter and Overtime, burning-rubber country rock like Digging My Way Out, adamant life-anthems like Fight and Fire, and the verifiably ready-to-drop pop of I Need You More. To pull off this kind of range, Andy and Kozza enlisted the production talents of LA-based Juny Mag, and also brought in big guns Dominic Fallacaro, Will Hensley, Chris Gehringer— all Grammy winners— for recording, mixing and mastering a project of its stylistic breadth.

The Glass Hour begins reminiscent of their previous styles, but soon shifts to stranger things, to a near future pop that sounds like it’s beaming in from the year 2019. Its rhythmic intricacies still reflect the hand-percussionist half of their writing team, only with Juny Mag scaling everything up to stadium-sized dimensions. Its sensibilities hover somewhere between Jack Garratt and Michael Jackson, and nowhere is this clearer than on I Can't Live, Overtime, and— unmistakably— on I Need You More, which could easily double as a movie soundtrack to an impromptu streetdancing scene. Then, with another flick of the radio dial, we coast through stretches of soul and blues that would be the envy of Amos Lee, and hear great cloudbursts of gospel choir breaking through on Shelter and Fire. With another flick, we run from unapologetically earnest love songs like Searching and Mama Told Me to power-numbers like Fight, Digging My Way Out and Come Forward, then back again to the stripped-down, unplugged rawness of Hold You and the soul-searching bittersweetness of Forgiven. Andy and Kozza like to continually surprise their listeners— and themselves. They are happiest when they're unsure what's coming next. The only certainty is that they've only begun, with 2017 already booked full with a headlining tour, a prominent spot on the Rockboat line-up, and a new album proudly in hand.

Grab a refreshing beverage at the outdoor bar; full menu available inside the Waterside Café until 9pm.

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Come see all Waterside 2017 summer shows!