Let’s talk about Noise Pop 2026 in San Francisco, where a lively gaggle of badge-wearing music fans and industry folks zigzag across the city each night trying to see as many shows as humanly possible in a single week. Since its founding in 1993, Noise Pop has been one of the city’s most beloved independent music festivals, built around the small venues and a musically inclined spirit that define San Francisco’s culture. What started as a modest gathering of indie and underground bands has grown into a weeklong celebration that still feels intimate, with shows scattered across rooms like Bottom of the Hill, Swedish American Hall, and Great American Music Hall. This year’s lineup carried that tradition forward, featuring artists including Jeffrey Lewis, Stephen Malkmus, Rogue Wave, illuminati hotties, Black Marble, Sun Ra Arkestra, and many more. I had the pleasure of catching several of these sets as both a writer and photography guest, bouncing between venues and soaking in that unmistakable Noise Pop energy where the whole city briefly feels like one interconnected stage.
Bottom of the Hill is closing soon, so it felt especially meaningful to catch Jeffrey Lewis there during Noise Pop. It was also my introduction to his music, which is funny because so many people in my life have been talking about him for years. My sixteen-year-old daughter told me one of her high school friends is obsessed with him. My old college roommate has long sung his praises. Even an ex-boyfriend from twenty-five years ago continues to rave about Jeffrey Lewis. One of those people lives in New York, another has family there, and another is a longtime resident of Richmond, CA. Clearly, Lewis has a reach.
Seeing him live, it’s easy to understand why. Lewis has a curious, slightly scampish look about him, and his band carried a youthful glow. They may well be half his age, but they played with the confidence of seasoned musicians, and Lewis himself seemed just as youthful as they were. I had been warned his voice had a certain flavor you either like or don’t, but it didn’t strike me that way. It simply had a tone I hadn’t quite heard before, with Violent Femmes top notes and a little They Might Be Giants in the mix, with Danielson Family style undertones floating underneath.
The writing was intricate and exciting. There’s something Bob Dylan-esque in the political wit, but underneath it lives a kind of farcical whimsy. The songs carry a knowing sarcasm, but it’s cloaked in kindness and solidarity.
The crowd mirrored that energy. It felt like a mix of longtime San Franciscans, Noise Pop badge holders, and the deeply devoted Jeffrey Lewis fans. The room was packed, with people outside hoping to get in. Inside, the audience stood shoulder to shoulder, attentive, postured, and engaged. No one was drifting out to the smoking patio.
The next night took a bit of emotional recalibration for me. I had originally hoped to catch Stephen Malkmus at Bottom of the Hill and, as a longtime Pavement fan, I was quietly nursing my disappointment while projecting positive vibes toward the alternate show I’d been granted. That show was The Joy Formidable at Swedish American Hall, a band I’d always heard described in a few simple terms: loud, Welsh, and beloved enough that friends of mine have flown across the country just to see them.
Noise Pop is known for booking unusual or special sets, and this one came with a twist. The performance was announced as acoustic. That raised some eyebrows. The Joy Formidable has a reputation as one of the loudest live bands around, and several friends in the music scene agreed. “I don’t know… do I like that band?” Others, the diehards, were more direct. “You should absolutely go to this.”
So I went.
And I was very pleasantly surprised. In fact, I would say The Joy Formidable ended up being the highlight of Noise Pop for me.
The band is incredibly tight, which makes sense considering the two main members were married for many years. That kind of musical bond doesn’t disappear. They came out and began working through what sounded like a familiar catalog because someone in the front row immediately stood up and started dancing. The band actually stopped the show to recognize it, joking that they had never had both a dancer and a clapper at one of their acoustic shows before.
Though the two are now divorced, their chemistry is unmistakable. The moment they touched the instruments, they locked right in.
Ritzy Bryan, the voice listeners know from the records, could barely stay in her chair during the first couple of songs. Her guitar slipped flat across her lap at one point, and she got a little flustered. At first, I thought it was nerves, but my friend leaned over and said what was probably the truth. “All she wants to do is run around the stage like she normally does. She’s stuck in a chair.”
Her bandmate, Rhydian Dafydd, had a gentle and attentive presence, following her cues as they settled into the set. And what unfolded was the least acoustic acoustic show I’ve ever seen. They stomped in unison to create percussion, layered pre-recorded synth and pedal textures, and built a surprisingly full sound for just two players. Many of the songs rose in synchronized guitar crescendos that suddenly cut out again, almost like punk songs or the marching rhythms of British Isles fight songs. They even sang several songs in Welsh.
After a short break between sets, the band reappeared in one of the evening’s most striking moments. They stood silhouetted on the staircase in the middle of the room, directly above the crowd, delivering near a cappella vocals over gentle guitars. From that vantage point, they spoke about America, hope, and the belief that we can still do better. The songs that followed leaned into that.
A third set followed, where each supported the other’s solo work. Ritzy mentioned she had been working on science-themed songs accompanied by illustrations, and that there were limited copies of her book at the merch table. I was tempted to pick one up, but it just wasn’t in the cards that night. The music that night was unmatched.
What began as a show I thought might feel sleepy turned into something that left me wanting to see the band again in their full electric force.
In the final stretch, they brought out Matt Thomas, who had been helping at the merch table. He joined with sleigh bells strapped to his ankles and more in his hands, filling out the sound so completely it felt like five musicians were onstage.
The Joy Formidable completely blew my mind, and I would happily see them again anytime.
I first started listening to Tortoise around 1999, when I was living in San Francisco, hanging out with a loose crew of proto-hipsters in the Tenderloin and catching shows at places like Edinburgh Castle and Great American. So it felt a little full circle to finally see them play in that same neighborhood all these years later.
Tortoise emerged from the Chicago underground in the early 1990s and became one of the defining bands of what people came to call post-rock or Chicago math rock. Their music blends jazz structure, krautrock repetition, dub basslines, vibraphone melodies, and a rhythmic precision that feels almost architectural. It’s music that sounds complicated on paper but somehow feels effortless when you’re standing in a room with it.
I walked in during the last few moments of the opener, Orcutt Shelly Miller, who were absolutely shredding. The guitars were wild and elastic and loud enough that I immediately wished my parking situation hadn’t taken so long. Between that band and Tortoise, the night was already shaping up to be something special.
Between sets, something strange happened. A low buzzing tone started creeping through the Great American. Then some thumping and tapping sounds that were just loud enough to disturb everyone around me. People kept turning to each other and asking, “What’s that noise?” One guy behind me started rubbing the back of his neck as he could physically feel it.
Then it clicked. It sounded suspiciously like an Alpha frequency or something close to the Schumann resonance, the low electromagnetic frequency that the Earth naturally produces. A few of the music nerds around me seemed to realize it at the same moment, and we all started laughing. Others looked convinced the sound engineer was having a meltdown. Either way, the room was being tuned toward the planet itself.
When Tortoise finally took the stage, the set was exactly what longtime fans hoped for: intricate, jazzy, synchronized, and complete. Vibraphones shimmered over tight bass lines while two drummers created rhythms that felt almost mechanical in their precision. It was funny, looking around the room, to see such a specific slice of humanity all dancing together. Music nerds, CEOs, actual musicians, Music production office assistants, producers, audiophiles, and longtime fans all moving like it was some kind of global rhythm ritual, even though it was really just a bunch of brilliantly rearranged chords played by best friends on a stage nearly thirty years after they first wrote them.
Setlist
• Vexations
• Monica
• In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven, There Were Women and Men
• Four-Day Interval
• Prepare Your Coffin
• Dot/Eyes
• A Title Comes
• Gesceap
• Layered Presence
• Ten-Day Interval
• Promenade à deux
• Night gang
Last but not least came Rogue Wave at Swedish American Hall. Rogue Wave is one of Oakland’s great bands, now about twenty-five years into their run. The lineup has rotated over the years, but this time the stage featured Zach Rogue, Pat Spurgeon, Gram LeBron, Mark Masanori, and another player who handled slide guitar beautifully.
The band played their first record, Out of the Shadow, at a matinee show and followed it later that night with Descended Like Vultures. When I arrived, there was a palpable nostalgia in the air. Friends, family, and longtime fans were already lined up outside, and once the doors opened, everyone pressed close to the stage. People along the side chairs stood up on their tiptoes. The balcony in step. Nearly everyone in the room was singing along. It felt like a home team coming home.
It had been about eight years since they had last played these songs in full, and there was a slightly rusty start, but it didn’t last long. Soon, everything fell into place. Pat Spurgeon proved once again that he is one of the Bay Area’s most reliable and dynamic drummers, recently also playing with The Dandy Warhols and Port O’Brien. Gram LeBron has spent years composing film scores and helping run several Bay Area venues, and Zach Rogue, the band’s central creative force, has built a wide-ranging career that stretches from Crayola commercial soundtracks to deeply personal solo work built on intimate storytelling.
Watching them in a room as small and beautiful as Swedish American Hall felt special. After living in Oakland for so many years and seeing Rogue Wave in all kinds of settings, it was striking to look around and notice the gray hair in the room, fans who have clearly grown up alongside the band. And yet when the music hit its stride, Rogue Wave still rocked just as hard.
Going to Noise Pop as a Bay Area native definitely has its advantages when it comes to navigating the city’s patchwork of venues and events. But if you have anything else happening in your life at all, kids, pets, work, celebrations, funerals, or just the general stress of being alive, it can easily take twice as long to get anywhere. Reflecting on the week, I realized how many shows slip through your fingers at a festival like this. Noise Pop spreads so many wonderful performances across the city that you inevitably miss more than you catch. Still, the few I did make it to felt juicy and deeply satisfying, and I’m grateful for that.
