You'll all be glad to hear that Friday went much better for us, festival-wise, than the previous two days. After a hungover breakfast at Pine State Biscuits and a massive seafood lunch at the historic Jake's Famous Crawfish, with some decompressing and a shopping stop at Flora in between, we caught a bus to Rontoms for a jag of early-evening sets. We were able to catch six bands between 5 and 8pm, thanks to two stages -- part of a showcase for thriving local label Bladen County -- in the large, lovely outside space behind the bar (which itself is memorably decked out in vintage furnishings).
Blue Horns (left) were first and wound up my favorite of the batch. Armed with a jittery jangle that's equal parts '50s rock 'n' roll and '80s college rock, the band is completed by frontman Brian Park's very distinctive voice, a quivering gasp-for-air yelp that somehow recalls Corin effin' Tucker. Being first and playing outside, their energy was somewhat wasted on the crowd, but I'd love to see them play late-night in a small, crowded bar. Team Evil, an Oregon-grown collective / supergroup, were also quite good, plying sleepily experimental pop that recalled Broken Social Scene's mellower moments and maybe Tortoise with dreamy vocals (wait, does that make the Sea & Cake?).Not be confused with Langhorne Slim, who's also playing the festival, Dakota Slim tapped a messy, emotionally raw vein of indie-folk-rock that didn't need tapping. Their set was dark, dirty, and deeply cliched. The Skinnyz were even worse, starting with ineffectual hipster garage-rock before massacring another genre (including this city's much-loved reggae) with every song. It didn't help that every song included a wide swath of Guns 'N' Roses-inspired guitar cheese. "These guys are a colossal yawn," wrote my wife in my notepad, later adding, "They keep getting worse!"
Invisible Rockets (right) improved our mood from there, though the first half of their set was too harmless and low-energy for our liking. Their bittersweet, guitar-strong Americana wasn't so far removed from Ladyhawk and Silkworm, and the occasional harmonies must be why they get compared to Dr. Dog. Little Pieces (ex-Sunset Valley) were better but still awfully mellow until about halfway through their set, digging deep into dreamy, crunchy, psych-stained guitar-pop, with tinges of surf and rockabilly creeping in towards the end.From there we got sidetracked at a street fair (there were Native American-made bison tacos, fire-flirting hula hoopers, and pretty bad jazz-jam fusion) and missed Micah Blue Smaldone at the lovely Doug Fir, a sort of retro ski lodge.
But we made it to the all-ages half of Satyricon to c
atch the final few songs of Portland's buzz-building Eat Skull, whose white-noise-y shitgaze horror-punk was super loud and at times not unlike the Clean's early singles. Then came Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death (left), the latest venture from Spencer Moody (of Murder City Devils, Dead Low Tide, and Smoke And Smoke fame). The band's doomy dirges were fleshed out by Spencer's trademark singing -- still a soulful, cathartic howl that fills the room -- but the players' instrument-switching and heady experimentation made for a finished product more lush, atmospheric, and syrupy than Moody's past bands. They even closed with a duet between Spencer and the drummer, who just happened to be Pretty Girls Make Graves' Andrea Zollo. (Damn.) It's worth noting that with all the excited talk about the festival's aborted Murder City Devils reunion, TOLSATD played to a small room at just half-capacity or so. That's a shame.Zipping over to Dante's, we caught the last song of Colour Revolt, a band I downright loathe on record but found pretty respectable live. We stayed for These Arms Are Snakes but were quite instantly made weary by the singer's manic, showy strutting and exuberant freaking out. It was a lot more smugness that we had the energy to absorb (or deflect).
Exhausted and with my wife literally falling asleep on her feet, we managed to get to the Roseland Theater to see a little act called TV On The Radio, who were all caged energy and spacey, soulful genre-melding. Highlights included several tracks from this month's upcoming Dear Science as well as a stirring delivery of "Province," a fiery and propulsive take on "Wolf Like Me," and a slow, stripped-down version of "Dirty Whirlwind," all from the band's insanely great previous album, Return to Cookie Mountain. It being the West Coast, fans were doing shitty hippie dances like nobody's business, but even that couldn't detract from the greatness of TVOTR's set. What a perfect way to end a packed night of shows.
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