Críticas

Sat 18 Jul – 9th Annual Village Voice Siren Music Festival
I've gone to this a number of times, every year for the past 3-4 years or so. In fact, for whatever reason, I only now feel obligated to at least give people an impression of what it might have been like, in case you were unfortunate enough to miss it.

A running theme with each festival is the day is perfect and sunny. For most of the people there, the sun remains the biggest problem, giving people colors of red on their faces and shoulders. Even the beach being right nearby can't alleviate whatever the heat is, since as soon as you walk onto the pavement, you feel like you're in an oven.

Simplicity purposes (and laziness) meant that I stayed only at the main stage. Tiny Masters of Today looked and sounded like they may have been good, but I never get there early enough to see the first act. Four minutes or so is all I heard, it sounded alright, but I won't judge them on that. It takes more time.

Micachu & The Shapes reminded me of Cockney English children who a century ago would be asking if you wanted your shoes shined. Most likely, they had descended from a long line of chimney sweeps. Enough about their obvious lower-class English roots, they were an interesting band. Moments of goodness did pop up here and there, though it seemed to happen only when they got particularly discordant or grooving. Their set felt confused, it did not seem to know whether to be Mars or !!!, and it meandered on like this. However, towards the end they played a song that actually went onto the noise horizon, which they said was "new". So there's some hope that perhaps they find some sort of direction.

Japandroids rocked my face off. They hit the ground running, hard, musically speaking of course. Most of their audience banter was around the lines of "Golly Gosh, I can't believe how many of you there are." though done in a more literate way of course. Such simple means (drums and guitar + vocals) created such good music. Sort of like a No Age but colored in to add depth. Post-Emo rock would probably be my best description, the sort of thing you could get drunk to and still feel proud listening to, unlike the vast majority of bar music. Completely excellent, they said something about coming to NYC again. Honestly, I would recommend looking them up when they do. Fucking awesome.

Frightened Rabbit looked like they could be in any Brooklyn band, with plaids and beards. Until you heard their heavily Scottish accents. A sort of "eh" performance. They weren't terrible, but they weren't very memorable either. Sort of catchy, but nothing particularly mind-altering or amazing about them.

Grand Duchy rocked pretty hard. Again, in a direct, effective way. Despite what they are called, they're no Luxembourg. A pretty good background pedigree, so it shouldn't be shocking that they are so good. Of course, some of the lyrics felt like they were harking back to the deliberate clumsiness of the Pixies, so that seemed a little obvious. Otherwise though, it did seem like a logical conclusion of their various other projects rather than a rip-off of old ideas.

The Raveonettes would've melted Andy Warhol's heart, at least the female lead singer. She did a pretty good impression of Nico's icy darkness, and the little banter they had with the audience only made their performance that much better. It seemed like a band which took a less intense version of shoegaze and noisy pop then their obvious influences My Bloody Valentine et al. They created loud, harsh melodies with a terrific rhythm section. Particularly their last song was like a rhythmic orgy, complete with disorienting noise. Surprisingly effective, and their coldness towards the audience felt completely appropriate.

Idiotic, slow moshing is what occurred with Built to Spill's performance, at least that's how the underweight, blond-haired kid described it to me. I'd never heard them before, but 3 songs into their set they really hit their stride. And thankfully (or unfortunate, depending on your perspective), these lanky kids began sort of creating an excuse to grope people by doing a slow mosh. None of them looked like they ate food often, but were dedicated fans of drugs and alcohol. All of them collided into one another, feeling nothing because that's exactly how much they weighed. Barely anyone told them to stop, besides two exasperated staff members who had the look on their faces of "You got to be fucking kidding me with this". As soon as the two staff members got slammed into, they almost immediately left. No point it trying to impose order on bored little indie children. Built to Spill really created some excellent interplay, yet didn't seem to be stuck up about it, like many bands do. Instead, they really were quite honest in just trying to get people to move. Worth seeing, especially if you're stuck in a crowd of sweating morons.

Overall, a decent enough Siren. Not the best one I've been to, but they did overcome the mush sound by having different enough sounding bands this year. Usually the bands sort of mesh into one another. At least each one had its own personality. Japandroids and Built to Spill really wowed me the most to be honest.