4KNOTS FEST South Street Seaport Pier 17, NYC 7.16.2011
In past years the Village Voice has presented Siren Fest in, the annual FREE summer indie music festival in Coney Island. This year Siren Fest is no more, but the Village Voice along with the Seaport Music Festival have made a new FREE festival this summer called 4KNOTS. On the same stage this summer, there have been many other free shows that include Lower Dens, The Wake, and The Radio Dept. This stage also hosted the 4KNOTS kick off show the weekend before the festival itself that included the Screaming Females and Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. This festival had a main stage with 6 bands, and a 21+ indoor lounge with other artists playing DJ sets that included Brahms, Finger on the Pulse, Punches, Dan Deacon and Yeasayer.
The first band ever to play 4KNOTS fest was Mr. Dream (which the lead singer just had to mention). Mr. Dream is a Brooklyn based band with one LP (Trash Hit) whose drummer (Nick Sylvester) and bassist (Matt Morello) have both worked as music writers for Pitchfork. The band came out with crazy awesome distorted punk rock, riffs that were out of the normal punk rock spectrum, droning to upbeat melodies, intense drum beats and an incredible bass line. A good opener for the festival.
Eleanor Friedberger is no newcomer to the music scene. She is known for her band The Fiery Furnaces which is made up of her and her brother Matthew Friedberger who have released 9 LP’s since 2003. Eleanor has recently released her debut critically acclaimed solo album ‘Last Summer’. She came playing almost her entire solo album with her beautiful vocals, fun pop beats, chill bass lines, and happy keyboard sounds. Eleanor is touring on her new album with Deerhunter, whose lead singer Bradford Cox was recently seen at her last show at Europa in Brooklyn. When my brother asked who picked out her striped outfit that day, who jokingly thought Bradford did, she said he did pick it out to his suprise. Eleanor Friedberger will be opening for Deerhunter at Webster Hall on August 22-23.
Brad Oberhofer (20 years old) and his band Oberhofer is a band formed in Brooklyn although Brad is from Tacoma, WA. He is a very over the top, eccentric, and energetic character on stage who very much got the crowed excited with his pop-punk noise. You can hear girls (and guys) yelling out in the crowd “Brad I want your babies”. He is a new young, pretty boy face to the industry with bright songs and cool keyboard sounds.
After three Brooklyn based bands played, there was one from very far away. Davila 666 is a Puerto Rican based 6 piece, garage punk band. They came out with fuzzy sounding guitars, pounding drum beats and sounds of anarchy. A fun small mosh pit started during the bands set depending on the speed of the songs since they do vary there were some breaks. The Puerto Rican press was spotted in crowd as well as many people yelling out things in Spanish to the band. This band put on a very fun set although I had no idea what they were singing most of the time.
One of the two biggest reasons people came out to the free festival was for Titus Andronicus, the awesome indie punk band from suburban New Jersey. You can hear variable sounding influences in them from The Replacements to Neutral Milk Hotel. Titus’s songs carry a variation of emotional sounds from Patrick’s screaming anthems to their fun Celtic punk sounding songs, promoting drinking, partying and enjoying life. The band (and the crowd) was full of energy from the intense, high speed punk songs, causing a mosh pit that was as wide as the entire crowd. Anyone who cared to be in the pit, at least a hundred people it seemed like, were running and slamming into each almost non-stop throughout the set with people crowd surfing on top of it. Even the front man Patrick Stickles went into the crowd to enjoy some of the fun although security did not seem to enjoy it. Towards the end of the set you hear Patrick howling the lyrics “your life is over!” of their self-titled song, in which the crowd was at one of its most insane points, going nuts, singing along and “literally killing each other” to the bands sarcastic motto and philosophy.
The headlining band The Black Angels sent 4Knots back 45 years to the band’s home city of Austin, Texas. They are a band with 3 LPs that have big influences from (and are a modernized version of specifically) 13th Floor elevators (a major psych band from the 60s and Austin as well who supposedly coined the term psychedelic), The Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre who they’ve opened for. The Black angels played a trippy, psychedelic set with harsh, intense drum beats, sounds that are distorted and noisy to smooth long 60s sounding guitar riffs. The lead singer Alex Maas’s droning, tripped out voice reminded me of Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane when hearing him live. Overall they are a retro 60s sounding band with a modern kick, trippy melodies with slightly up beat tempos, and groovy music. There was a small concern about the crowd during this set though. Since this was a free show, and the previous band Titus Andronicus usually brings a wild a crowd, a part of that wild crowd remained wild for The Black Angel’s set. I could not believe that people were moshing, slamming into each other during slow, spacey songs. Although they do have some upbeat songs, this is not a band to mosh too, and being hit during this set is something that is frustrating to an extent. However, this was an amazing festival.
-Matt Koopersmith 7/17/11
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