News

Northside Festival Report: Day 3

11:59 a.m. · June 14, 2009 · by Nick Neyland

This report on the third day of the Northside Festival in Brooklyn begins with a few notes on the sartorial offerings on display. It’s a mild summer in the city, but that hasn’t stopped many of the bands dressing in shorts, taking their shirts off and even wearing flip-flops on stage. Boys, please take note: unless you are incredibly buff, no one in the audience wants to see your saggy man-boobs flapping around as you sing and play guitar. Also, don’t wear shorts. I know it’s hot, but audiences generally want to watch something visually spectacular (ie. the Make-Up, Devo, etc.) or, at the very least, performers who are easy on the eye. Yesterday, I witnessed one member of a band (who shall remain nameless) flailing around on stage in long shorts, no shirt on, a huge beer belly, terrible tattoos, a scraggly beard and hair tied back in a ponytail.

Perhaps I’m just seeing the wrong bands, but the Northside Festival is not scoring big points for sartorial elegance. It strikes me that some of these bands would make a big impression if they dressed up; it would certainly provide some much needed visual allure for jean-short-weary audiences. Take O’Death, for example, who played in the middle of the afternoon at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday. Their music offers a robust amalgamation of the ghost ship chants of the Bad Seeds and Will Oldham’s off-key bellyaching. The drummer sometimes hammers his kit with thick metal chains. All that’s missing is the clothing—dressed in Nick Cave-style undertaker garb, O’Death would be a fearsome live proposition. Instead, I find myself distracted by the mid-afternoon mosh pit, which is primarily female, and led by one woman who actually looks like she might be losing her mind as O’Death plays.

I arrive at Death By Audio a few hours later, where another female-led mosh pit emerges for Brooklyn band Sisters. The women are clearly putting their male counterparts to shame at the Northside Festival. Before Sisters play, there’s a guy in the back room who apes Panda Bear’s live set up by utilizing two Roland SP-404 samplers and a mixer. Sadly, no one seems to know who he is, but he creates some affable techno, clogged with bleeps and whimsical samples. Sisters play after he finishes, and are the latest band to emerge from the community at the Death By Audio loft. They share a love of blistering volume with their roommates in A Place to Bury Strangers. Sisters are a two-piece guitar and drums outfit, with occasional keyboards and processed beats. They set up in front of a giant pile of foreboding amps, leaving audience members in no doubt that their ears are going to be shredded by the end of this performance.

Sisters look great—drummer Matt has a huge afro that rocks back and forth as he pummels his drums, and the stack of amps acts like a third member of the band. It certainly causes people up front to question the validity of their decision to stand so close to the stage when singer/guitarist Aaron begins scraping great sheets of noise from his instrument. They lack the thinness that some two-piece bands discover when all the bass frequencies are stripped from their music, and have a great pop-noise thing going on. Imagine a punky My Bloody Valentine with John Bonham on drums. Sisters trigger an instant reflex to dance and sing in half the audience, and some of the widest smiles of the entire festival can be seen when two little grunge kids join the mosh pit at the end. A special moment.

Sisters’ set was delayed due to cancellations at Death By Audio, so I bike over to the Shank in Greenpoint, hoping to catch the somber stylings of Woods. The Shank is a spectacular venue. It’s essentially a large and extremely dark warehouse, converted into a performance space by the Less Artists More Condos organization. Unfortunately, there are more technical difficulties here, although they are handing out free beer to everyone, so there are few complaints. Three-piece punks Pygmy Shrews are playing as I arrive. They set up Shellac style, with guitar, bass, drums all in a row. Pygmy Shrews alternate between hoarse male and female vocals, both delivered in a gruff, uncompromising style to a backdrop of thickly layered distortion. It’s a solid, if somewhat unoriginal sound.

The Shank is heaving with bodies by the time Woods take the stage. Clearly, this is the place to be for most Northside attendees. More technical issues unfold as they set up, meaning I won’t get to see Cymbals Eat Guitars at the Music Hall of Williamsburg or Knight School at Public Assembly. Fortunately, the latter will play again today. The lack of air conditioning in the venue creates an oppressive air as Woods begin their set, but the balmy atmosphere suits them. Their music absorbs the same kind of brittle melancholia as the first couple of Galaxie 500 records, and there’s palpable evidence that their audience has increased significantly here—people in the front row are singing along to every word of the beautiful “Rain On.” Also, Woods have a guy who plays a tape recorder and a bank of FX pedals with a device attached to his mouth. Every band should have one of those.

My evening ends with a succession of failed attempts at entering over-subscribed venues, so I end up at Bruar Falls, where DJs from Crystal Stilts and the What’s Your Rutpture? label entertain the weary masses. Gutsies, who share one member with the Beets, play a short set of melodic powerpop. They’re the Raspberries to the Beets’ Banana Splits. There’s a Mummy theme at the venue tonight, and toilet paper is being handed out to all the patrons at the venue. Gradually, everyone is either swaddled in the stuff or throwing it around, more free beer is consumed, and a covers band comprised of members of Crystal Stilts, Knight School, Cause Co-Motion and many others take the stage. It’s the perfect end to day three of the festival, which concludes today with performances by the Dodos, Bill Callahan, Ponytail and Crystal Stilts.