First off, I apologize for being an utter failure at festival coverage this year. Having spotty internet has hurt me a lot this year, but still…no excuse. So, I found a way to avoid festival coverage failure…cover a one day festival! Gonna do that again at the end of August when I see Virgin FreeFest in Maryland. Yes, I opted out of Pitchfork this year to see Siren and it was definitely an enjoyable trip. I handed my camera to my friend Rohan and we watched the following bands and enjoyed ourselves mightily. Here’s what you might have seen if you were up in Coney Island this past weekend.
Micachu & the Shapes
This was the first act of the day that I was really interested in seeing. I did catch a few minutes of Blue Van, but they sounded like a shitty version of U.S. Royalty. Moving on. Jewellery seems like it’s high on production value, so I wasn’t sure how well the Micachu set would translate live. Answer: pretty well, actually. Keyboardist Raisa Khan kept things interesting, beating various forms of percussion, including a couple of empty wine bottles and drummer Marc Pell seemed to be utterly enjoying himself. Micachu herself…looked utterly bored. The songs sounded great and she must have known that she had everyone wrapped around her finger because the only time she really appeared to be rocking out on that homemade guitar of hers was during “Golden Phone.” Everyone, including Zack Galifiniakis, still enjoyed themselves since the songs are surprisingly catchy considering Micachu’s harsh accent and the prevalence of NOISE! FUCKING NOISE! in the middle of each song. Despite really having their shit together, they still seemed a sort of like the little kids at the big kids rock show. Which is a terrible thing to say considering that Tiny Masters of Today actually opened the show. Despite all of these detractors, I’ll almost certainly see Mica Levi & co. again when they come through DC in September. I guess she has me around her finger, too.
Micachu & The Shapes :: Golden Phone
Japandroids
The Japandroids set had the opposite effect entirely. The duo from Vancouver has stage presence for miles and are clearly having more fun than anyone else on the bill (with the possible exception of Monotonix.) However their songs aren’t nearly as interesting as those of the London trio that preceded them. They come across as a younger, less road-tested No Age coming of age in front of the Pitchfork readers of America and by sheer power of enthusiasm they pull through their set, buzz intact. Singer/guitarist Brian King uses the entirety of the stage including the monitors, the speakers and drummer David Prowse’s bass drum as acceptable places to riff up a storm. The nerdy part of my brain thought that maybe since they’ve been known to cover McLusky’s “To Hell With Good Intentions” during their live show that Falkous would join them onstage since he was here performing with Future of the Left. The realistic part of me knew that wouldn’t happen and they ended the set with “Crazy/Forever,” disappointing the hordes of fans who wondered why they didn’t play “Wet Hair.”
Thee Oh Sees
Thee Oh Sees were scheduled to play from 3:30pm – 4:10pm. After sort of dragging our feet leaving the Japandroids set we made our way over to the other stage at 3:45…maybe 3:50pm. At which point we caught the tail end of what turned out to be Thee Oh Sees last song. I have no idea why their set was cut twenty minutes short but since Thee Oh Sees were by far one of the best bands I saw at this past SXSW, I was very disappointed that I only got to catch the lightning quick, sweat-addled distorted folky-punk songs for about two minutes. The east coast has to wait until October. And they’re coming to my area within a week of The Dodos. SF-gasm? I think so.
Future of the Left
Speaking of beyond killer. Future of the Left put on the best set of the whole day. I’ve caught them three times since October and they get better every single time. To be fair, this time I had the advantage of actually knowing the songs on their two releases…which thus far don’t hold up for me as well as their live show, but I’m willing to try again. Andy Falkous looked as pissed off and fired up as Mica Levi looked bored and in the middle of the set, Brian King from Japandroids pushed his way past me to park himself in front of the monitor and learn from the masters. The screaming guitars (and outright screaming) gives the more subdued vocals an even stronger punch (especially when the lyric is something like, “Colin was a pussy, a very pretty pussy.”) I’m also finally able to see Future of the Left without trying to make the McLusky comparisons. I’ve never seen them, I accept this and with Future of the Left letting loose fury like this, it doesn’t matter. We needed a break to catch our breath after this set, which is why we missed A Place to Bury Strangers, a band that we weren’t sure would work well in sunlight. Apparently we were wrong.
Future of the Left :: Arming Eritrea
Monotonix
Okay, so here’s the deal. We tried to see Monotonix. Rohan’s seen them nine times and I’ve seen them three times so we knew that the scantily clad Israeli band would be playing hardly memorable songs at high decibel levels and moving through and atop the crowd on bass drums, trash cans and other human beings. What we didn’t know was that the press pit would be closed. It makes sense since they immediately set up in the middle of the audience, but it meant that there could be no fence jumping! It also meant that by the time we figured this out we were nowhere near any place where we could actually see them jumping around playing chords that sound like they belong on old Kyuss records. We can’t really get irritated at the band for wanting to do their shtick effectively and we can’t really get irritated at the Siren staff for doing their job. But we could get irritated at the situation as a whole.
The Raveonettes
We only saw a few minutes of the Raveonettes because quite honestly, a few minutes was all we needed. We immediately got that they were fans of The Jesus & Mary Chain and that their low vocals and minor key exuded a sort of mod cool. We also got that they weren’t going to move from their spots and honestly, downtempo songs performed with zero energy are hardly going to whip me into a frenzy, especially after having seen Future of the Left. When they introduced a new track as something more dancey and it couldn’t have inspired dance moves in a Mexican jumping bean, we decided it was time to go.
Spank Rock
I’m only a lukewarm Built to Spill fan and Rohan really wanted to see Spank Rock so we decided to see how the set would work out. How it worked…Naeem did one or two songs on his own with XXXChange and Alex Rockswell, none of which were off of YoYoYoYoYoYo before saying that he was tired of the cameras in the front and inviting everyone to jump the barrier. Then suddenly, local duo Ninjasonik got up there and did a couple of their own tracks which are both catchy and hilarious but not what I’d expected to see. A couple songs later they called up Amanda Blank and it became the Amanda Blank show. That woman also has stage presence (and sex appeal) for miles but it wasn’t until after her solo songs when the crew came together to perform “Bump” that everything really seemed to come together. Their set had been a fun dance party up until that point. Unfortunately, that was the last song and things started to get really dicey when Spank Rock got cut off. The crowd really wanted another song and Spank Rock really didn’t want to leave the stage. So somehow the fireworks that went off over the Ferris Wheel seemed an appropriate mirror for the tensions onstage.
It also made it strange to hear “Carry the Zero” as we passed by the Built to Spill stage. I’d figured they’d have gotten kicked off, too, but apparently not.
Built to Spill :: Going Against Your Mind
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