hooves on the turf

Download “So Post All ‘Em” (from I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real.)

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McCarren Pool was the busiest I’ve seen, and Feist performed with perfection. I am always saddened by the image of her that has been created by people, though well-intentioned, who only know her through music videos and promo photos, or for that matter, through only studio recordings. She is no goddess, they say, and I say that too, but she saves rock and roll, and she must be watched live to believe this. It was only when she told the story of a Janet Jackson concert attendance at the age of 11 or 12, it struck me that her music, with its clear roots in blues and essentials of rock, is an honest representation of how “rock and roll” has collected, after gushes and falls and transformations and simplifications and complications, into this generation.

Update: more photos added.Â

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A lot of love came Dan Deacon’s way at McCarren Pool. People offered him hugs, someone his sunglasses and another a bag of ice to keep cool (the first he warmly accepted, the last two politely declined). Most impressively, fans offered the kind of devotion that comes from being well-versed in all Deaconian traditions involving sing-alongs, chants and co-ordinated finger waves with stretched arms (whatever is the technical term for this particular move). I’m guessing it’s official: Dan Deacon is a movement!

While I was taking photos, Borchers was down in the pit:

As a 3rd tier opener for Octopus Project, Dan Deacon’s set was a fraction of what it usually is. But at about 5 feet from his signature, crowd-level table (equipped with his colorful gadgets), Deacon might as well have been a headlining act. The set was filled out by opener OCDJ, friend and fellow Baltimorite.

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Download “Van Helsing Boombox” (from Six Demon Bag)

My favorite is the kind of music I imagine to have been created by hooligans. This includes an imagery, heavily influenced by the movie Underground, of irreparable, drunken devotion to music through an otherwise quiet night. Here the musicians boast of decent talent, but it’s gushing passion that boldens them. Led by roaming spirits to drink their money (and homes) away, of course, their heads and hearts simply can’t be rooted. It encompasses what Zach Condon called a “ramshackle orchestra” he first witnessed in Paris (and later re-created in Brooklyn). Man Man are such gypsies at heart, and that’s why I love them. Their show at McCarren Pool was the best I’ve seen all this summer. From the way they were physically set up on stage to the way the songs are written, arranged and performed, the group is very organic, and each member a gift. Albums are a bonus, but Man Man must simply be seen live. Besides, they’re how a “rock and roll” band should be: at once, talented and clumsy, serious and unserious, intellectual and anti-intellectual; but rebellious at all times by simply being all they care to be.

More after the jump.