Full Set Here
After all the worry and stress and hard work on behalf of JellyNYC, the increasingly misnamed Pool Parties returned to the Williamsburg Waterfront yesterday (Sunday, July 11th). While the weather was not one hundred percent cooperative, alternating light sprinkles and heavy humidity, the day was still pretty good, showing an evolution in the thought of the set up of the Waterfront.
This year, the biggest change is the facing of the stage. No longer is the stage near the water (removing the opportunity for some great photos of the artists and the New York city skyline), but rather nestled against some unfinished condos and a bar. We see the artists, the artists see us and the city.
The “Beer Garden” area has expanded providing better views of the stage for the lushes. The VIP area has shrunk, and it looked like the dodge ball court had as well. The food options changed up a bit, newcomers to the neighborhood The Meathook was on hand to sell a variety of BBQ and related meatstuffs, El Diablo Tacos was joined by Roberta’s, so there’s a variety of food options, each offering veggie friendly fare at reasonable enough prices.
Alcohol this year is from Brooklyn Brewery and Heineken along with the Australian wine vendor from last year. A new thing is that there are tip jars to the people selling you drink tickets joined by the tip jars at every other service stand except perhaps the EMT.
The artist merchandise area is still shoved off to the side away from everything else, which is really weird to me. The table always looks like it’s there as an afterthought. Out of the way from everything else. It gets good foot traffic when people are walking into the show, but there’s not a lot of people milling about afterwards (most likely due to patrons spending all their money tipping people).
Now, let’s talk about the artists.
Pictureplane was first up, providing a cross between blissful pop, dance standards, but shot through with darkness beneath the high-pitched vocals. Not so much chill wave as kill wave, perhaps. Less “Jack Your Body” more “Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare.” He was providing music that was a bit dancier than the rest of the line up, though he had less people moving, which is always unfortunate to see. The rhythms were good, the loops and samples were classics and the tracks mostly flowed into one another. He was at one point joined on stage by a blond in a naked fat suit and a dancing open-faced sandwich. Though I was having a great time, I think it would have gone down a bit smoother if it had been a night show or if he’d performed in a club setting to a different audience, not one that seemed to be conserving its strength for the rest of the line up.
Fang Island was huge anthemic rock with five members on stage mostly playing guitars, sharing vocal duties seemingly equally. The songs were epic and really well crafted, with that kind of noodly guitar sound that always makes me think of 1970s stadium rock but still very much a part of the indie pop rock world, in that degree of immediacy and accessibility. It’s unashamed unabashed feel good rock and it felt good. It felt real good, especially to the audience who had started to shake off the heat and move around a bit.
WHY? is live rock hip hop sounding somewhat like Kenan Bell (who performed at a Pool Party last summer) meets Dashboard Confessional with that middle-class bourgeoisie suburban experience. Are you a white, coffee shop denizen who likes Wes Anderson films and goes around saying you like Hip-Hop but don’t like Rap? Congratulations, WHY? is the act for you. Though with lyrics like “I’m fucking cold like a DQ Blizzard” I found it increasingly difficult to stay focused on the lyrics though I found myself really enjoying the school yard funk of the backing band. However, going back to listen to some of the tracks on their MySpace page allowed me to catch a glimpse of why this band had the largest audience reaction of the day. Ultimately though, it just wasn’t for me.
Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof combined to perform a weird bit of necro karaoke, playing Joy Division’s seminal classic Unknown Pleasures. I have a weird love-hate relationship with Joy Division in general, much preferring the output of New Order, but I can still see how Joy Division was important and how Ian Curtis was a great lyricist. However, I think a combination of hyper fellatio on the corpse of a band and a general indifference to must to the musical output of said band makes them a bit shakey.
So there’s no real attachment to Joy Division in my mind, though covering an entire album stuck me as kind of like a Guinness World Record attempt. Even if it’s a horrible nightmare, it will be entertaining to watch. Thankfully it wasn’t really a nightmare but the Deerxiu Division hewed so close to the original that it seemed almost kind of extraneous.
Jamie’s voice was strong but sounded a bit hollow as he had a lyric book set up on a music stand, which thankfully he didn’t consult that often. He didn’t try to ape Ian Curtis’s distinct duck shuffle, instead forming his limbs into geometric shapes as though trying to intercept the transmissions from the land of the dead.
It wasn’t horrible, but really it didn’t strike me as anything I needed to stay around for. Once I heard “She’s Lost Control,” I packed up and left having found several other pilgrims making the trek back to the L train.
