If the natural wine bars of New York seemed a little empty to you the past two nights, you're not imagining things: The city's creative class was being taken to ecstasy by Jai Paul.

At Knockdown Center in Queens on Tuesday night and at Brooklyn Steel on Wednesday, the enigmatic British musician delivered on the promise of his lo-fi pop in his first set of live performances in New York City, coming from his debut shows at Coachella the preceding weekends. After his massively influential pop demos leaked in 2013, Jai Paul fled the scene, seemingly devastated by the loss of artistic control. Paul didn't return with new music until 2019, and never performed live until this year. 

In Queens, arriving 30 minutes late to the stage at 9:30, the singer joked, "What's 30 minutes after 10 years?" With his face hidden behind a curtain of hair, and in a white tracksuit, he looked messianic. The crowd, dressed chicly in chore coats and work shirts, did not seem to mind. In fact, the energy inside Knockdown Center was white hot—I've never seen selvedge denim move quite like it did on Tuesday night. 

The audience arrived primly dressed, but left having worked up a sweat. The acoustics in the cavernous Knockdown Center softened Paul's already vibey music into a blanket of reverberation, but at the end, when hits like "BTSTU" and the Bollywood-sampling "Str8 Outta Mumbai" landed, they seemed to hit with the entire force of the intervening decade behind them, and got the associate creative directors gathered in Maspeth into an absolute frenzy. It was worth the wait.

Some more links for your Thursday morning:

• Maybe this is why Governor Kathy Hochul is so bad at this whole politics thing.
• The City may have to shoulder all of the MTA's payroll tax hike, because we wouldn't want to overburden Long Island.
• Mayor Eric Adams defended the NYPD’s bloated overtime costs, via the Daily News: "'I said, 'Is it that you dislike overtime, or you dislike the NYPD?' Because I never hear them talking about overtime in any of the other agencies. In all the agencies, I have overtime,’ said Adams, who retired from the NYPD as a captain. 'But no one gets riled up with overtime in parks, in HRA. Nobody gets riled up in overtime anywhere else but the New York City police department,' he said referring to the Parks Department and the city's Human Resources Administration, which falls under the umbrella of the Department of Social Services. 'That's all we focus on—NYPD. So is it anti-overtime? Or is it anti-police? And if it's anti-police, shame on us.'"
• "'I'm Here Because Donald Trump Raped Me,' E. Jean Carroll Testifies"
• The guys sent to freshen up Rikers are just the same old guys.
• Irreplaceable New York icon Hale and Hearty Soups has been saved from bankruptcy, to the relief of a grateful city. 
• The highlight from the Washington Post's Sean McElwee story has to be putting on Ted Kennedy's eulogy for RFK as sex music.
• What's going on with New York's medium-large birds? A goose terrorizes Fordham University, and a Bronx man gets nipped by a peacock? Batman!!!
• Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano has 14 relatives on payroll, which is probably fine.
• Pedestrian stops aren't actually turning up guns. (I feel like we knew this already?)
• Disability advocates find Access-A-Ride inadequate and discriminatory.
• The casinos are continuing to slouch towards us.
• Doctors may be going on strike at two Queens hospitals.
• And finally, KNICKS ADVANCE!