Woodsist/Captured Tracks Festival

For two days in July, Captured Tracks and Woodsist – two of the most exciting record labels around today, joined forces and threw a music festival in Brooklyn, New York like no other; a perfect snapshot of an invigorating moment in time and a chest-swelling rebellion against the overly scrubbed commercial slop clogging up the airwaves and a defiant return to the DIY creativity that has spawned some of the brightest scenes in musical history.

As befitting a festival with such quietly punk rock values, it was to take place in an abandoned backyard in Bushwick. Except that ominous weather predictions of thunder the previous day have forced it to relocate to the nearby Market Hotel. A fine idea in theory, except the Market Hotel is an old, crumbling building and it is sunny and nigh on 30 degrees Celsius outside, which means that inside, on the second, non air conditioned floor, it feels like it’s approaching 60 degrees, driving sweat soaked kids out of the venue in between sets and onto the sidewalks outside the nearby Mr Kiwi’s supermarket, much to the chagrin of Todd P, the festival’s lynchpin/promoter and general godfather to the Brooklyn lo-fi crew.  “Did you see where the festival was going to be today?” he asks us outside, as he shoos hordes of scruffy festivalgoers away from the sidewalks. “It’s a shame we had to do it indoors. But there was supposed to be storms!”

The weather is but a fleeting concern however, with such a stupefyingly great lineup, and most people seem perfectly content to brave the sweltering heat to listen to the music. After Todd P clambers onstage announce that Sarah Palin has finally retired from politics, Canadians Little Girls finally arrive, looking a little frazzled but sounding none the worse for it, their blistering set showcasing hard-edged nuggets of dark, jagged pop which they eagerly rip through like a lion attacking a gazelle. The Mayfair Set take to the stage after that in a rare live outing, drawing huge crowds curious to see this merging of Mike Sniper from Blank Dogs and Dee Dee from Dum Dum Girls. Their curiosity is amply rewarded with an all too brief set of songs which sounds like chiming 60’s pop being given a warm, aural, lo-fi bath – a swoonsome highlight of the day.

Always a love-it or absolutely-despise-it proposition, the Psychedelic Horseshit boys certainly didn’t make things easy on the audience, with their extravagantly experimental/atonal wonk rock keeping half of the room utterly captivated, whilst sending others fleeing for the exits. If you pay attention long enough however, you eventually do start to see the method to their madness; the beauty buried deep beneath their seemingly incoherent noise rock avalanche.

Sound issues push back Blank Dogs’ breathlessly anticipated set, but the band – spearheaded by the mysterious Mr Sniper, draws the biggest crowds of the night.  As they throw themselves headlong into their set it is clear their adulation isn’t misplaced. The raggedly amiable shoegaze pop of Crystal Stilts can’t possibly compete with that thunderous set, but by then everyone’s distracted by the fact that the only two fans aerating the venue have broken down. We take refuge by the much coveted window sill to watch the set but leave halfway through, seeking refuge in Ben and Jerry’s Smores ice cream and the cool night air. We have to reserve our energy for the next day’s instalment after all…

The next day is Independence Day, a strangely anticlimactic day for most New Yorkers but a perfect day for the festival, as the sun is shining as predicted and people flock to the Brooklyn Backyard, which feels less like a music festival – and certainly miles away from the overstuffed, overstressed like of Glastonbury – and more like a relaxed party in a friend’s backyard. Sausages cook in a corner, potent vodka tonics are passed round, and music is in the air. Unfortunately, we manage to miss Real Estate, German Measles and Beach Fossils due to shoddy time management, but manage to catch The Beets and their wonderfully lo-fi, no-fuss take on Buddy Holly-inspired punk pop, which somehow inspires moshing in the middle of the afternoon – no mean feat.

Ganglians are brilliant sounding like Animal Collective possessed by the spirits of Arthur Russell and Mark Linkous in one iridescent package, they command the attention of all present with gorgeously zonked out opener “Hair” and hold it until the fading notes of shimmering closer “Lost Words”, complete with Beach Boys harmonies from lanky frontman Ryan Grubbs.

There is a warming community spirit which runs through the veins of the festival: when Todd P asks punters to help pick up their own rubbish so “everyone can go home early”, people actually do it. Rather than any kind of media hyped “scene”, it feels more like a loose knit community: bands swap members with regularity and every second musician seems to play in several projects. It is a fact which Dee Dee underlines in her second appearance at the festival, when she concludes her own band Dum Dum Girls’ debut live set by telling the audience “We are the Dum Dum Girls…or we’re Blank Dogs, Crystal Stilts and Crocodiles” – referring to the presence onstage of Mike Sniper, Frankie Rose and spooky Bob Dylan lookalike Brandon Welchez respectively.

Once more, Dee Dee is a breath of cool air. Floating onstage like a glacial genetic splicing of PJ Harvey and Stevie Nicks, she quickly sends pulses racing as she brings her 50’s inflected world of tough girls and unreliable boys to vivid life. Racing through “Catholicked” and “Hey Sis”, she finally sends the crowd into spasms of delight with a roof-raising “Jail La La”, with its gleefully debauched refrain of “soon I’ll be in county jail”, as subversively fitting an end as any.

Tyvek had to pull out of the festival, but anticipation hangs heavy in the air anyway for Woods. Playing as the sun finally sets, they prove to be the perfect soundtrack, their delicate melodies and Jeremy Earl’s high, affecting vocals casting a bewitching spell, even during instrumental freakouts. Forthcoming UK single “To Clean” pricks up the ears of even the most fickle of punters, but it is their wrenching closer “Rain On” which truly stops the sun baked masses dead in their tracks, starting off like the morose cousin of Beck’s “Lost Cause” before mutating into something even more heartbreaking. The audiences are still in a daze when it’s over, but are quickly snapped to attention by the inimitable Kurt Vile and his heavy, reverb-drenched psych-rock wall of sound. Critics often hail Vile as the new, scruffy, scuzz rock incarnation of Tom Petty and his blue collar ilk, but just listening to the ringing guitar on the anthemic “Freeway” show the only person Kurt Vile is interested in sounding like is himself. Thank Christ.

By now, it’s well and truly nightfall, and just as energies are flagging, on come The Vivian Girls with their very own punk rock slumber party. They incite the fiercest moshing all weekend, and even invite some overzealous fans onstage to play instruments. Their camaraderie is infectious; If Dee was the inscrutable high priestess of the festival, this trio are the girls in the garage next door, nicking all your records and getting into trouble.

“Don’t piss off Todd P”, instructs Thee Oh Sees’ frontman John Dwyer, after fireworks-obsessed punters refuse to heed the promoter’s pleas not to detonate any explosives on the festival site. As Dwyer is both an imposing figure and the lead singer of the night’s headliners, people quickly comply. Satisfied, they launch into a rocket-fueled garage rock set which sounds not unlike Suicide jumping across burning hot coals, a set so well-received that they even get to come back for an encore – a stupendous end to a fantastic two days. The next Independence Day weekend certainly has a lot to live up to.