Generations throughout the years have constantly debated about who has the finest music. Every decade has its own sound and memory of what “music” should be, from the Brit-pop of the ’60s with The Beatles to the rock takeover of the ’70s with bands like Led Zeppelin and the Eagles. There’s a new documentary coming out called Meet Me In The Bathroom, and it’ll transport viewers back to New York in the early 2000s. The world will soon be transformed forever by the events on September 11, 2001, and hasn’t yet glimpsed the social media explosion that lies just a few years ahead.
The documentary will provide viewers with a glimpse inside the heart of New York City’s music scene via the eyes of some of the city’s greatest bands at the time, including The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Moldy Peaches, The Rapture, TV On The Radio, and Interpol. In interviews and archive films, the actors discuss their shaggy, moppy, early-scene hairstyles with viewers. The trailer, set to Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Y Control,” an amazing banger, immerses viewers in the sights & sounds that made New York the centre of cutting-edge creativity at the time.
Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs may be heard talking about her tragic experiences of being the female lead person of a band during this period, something that regrettably still rings true today. Despite the pressures of stardom, the bands all cherish their formative years in the limelight with equal fervour. Some of the plots of Meet Me In The Bathroom are based on Lizzy Goodman’s best-selling novel of the same name. The Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace-led picture has already hit a high note with critics, with Ross Bonaime calling the feature “impressive” and noting how the production maintained faithful to the historical period. Meet Me In The Bathroom is primed for success thanks to the recent surge in similar initiatives, such as those that have focused on the calamity that was Woodstock ’99, and written dramatised pieces like Apple TV+’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
Music lovers would be missing out if they didn’t check out this documentary, which has rare behind-the-scenes videos and interviews with many of the artists. Meet Me In The Bathroom will launch on November 4 at the IFC Center in New York and the Los Feliz Theatre in Los Angeles, with one-night-only screenings occurring across the US on November 8, and a streaming release on Showtime on November 25.