Photos by Andrew St. Clair
Summertime in New York City can create a wide range of images in your mind: fire hydrants gushing in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, waking up doused in sweat because your box fan doesn’t (and never will) cut it, sliced Mango on the beaches of Rockaway, Brighton and Coney or rich kids renting over-priced paddle boats in Central Park…
Regardless of what the summer means to you here in the city, one theme is constant throughout every borough: the free concerts — everywhere from Red Hook to Shaolin, all the way to the Prospect Park Bandshell and everyone from Rakim to They Might Be Giants. All. Fucking. Summer.
Luckily, our friends over at Village Voice hook it up with 4Knots Music Festival, a small-scale-large-scale festival at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport (p.k.a. Siren Music Festival). Lackadaisical sound-techs aside, this year was pretty rad.
Set Up: With two stages on neighboring piers, the event consists of rotating sets, low-overlap and a cornucopia of attendees ranging from Brooklyn’s finest stereotypes to Manhattan’s summer tourists. It’s very sweaty, but in a good way.
Weather: There were threats of rain all day long, but it never came. We were treated to a spectacular, sunny day that resulted in a few sunburns and that wonderful/awful feeling of being day drunk on a hot afternoon.
Crowds: It’s a free festival, so it’s always hard to determine exactly how many people were there, but the pier was never so crowded it became uncomfortable. One thing the attendees were, however, was pleasantly and completely drunk.
Not Your Festival If: You dislike loud music or free things. There’s definitely a taste that goes along with the lo-fi/punk vibes of the 4knots line up. But again, free. Who can say no to that?
All Around Champion: Maybe Kurt Vile & The Violators are just that good, but every other act at this year’s festival could take a textbook’s worth of notes from KV. Not only is Kurt Vile an absolutely ferocious guitar player with an increasingly impressive catalog of brilliantly crafted material, he also puts on one serious rock show. He doesn’t play gigs, he plays concerts. He dropped “Jesus Fever” and “Hunchback”, jamming them out the same way Wilco and Phish’s bastard child would. Not to mention, his rendition of “Peeping Tomboy” was spellbinding.
Best Show with the Worst Sound: Marnie Stern rules. Every time she hits the stage, she’s like a perfect hybrid of Iggy Pop’s “street walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm” and Tina Weymouth’s happy-bounce (normally achieved mid “Girlfriend Is Better”). She did just that with her afternoon set on the Pier 16 Stage (despite the sound guy not even being at the board for her first two songs, which basically meant no guitar in the live main-outs). Still Marnie Stern did what she does best: smile and shred. ¡Excellenté, muy bien!
Ballsiest Cover: When a sax player popped on stage during The Men’s show, I was crossing my fingers for some Springsteen. Then I heard the riff — that same riff that pops up once every hour in some way during my practices with The Bottom Dollars. The Men absolutely killed “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. The bass was Mike Watt fuzzy, the vibe felt like Motor City and the sax man wailed. Aces, gentlemen.
Set That Got The Kids Moshing (Finally): After plenty of opportunities and great sets from loud bands, the moment of moshing finally came when Parquet Courts took the stage. Not that we’re very surprised — the kineticism of their music basically demands that you start slamming into the people around you for full enjoyment. While the sound was a little lacking (as with everything on the main stage) it was still a pretty blistering set.
Best Girl Power: This year’s lineup was studded with quite a few badass chicks, sporting vibrant hair colors, belting, riffing, flailing (dancing) and all combinations of the above. The triumphant foursome of Heliotropes, though, takes the cake. Nowadays, almost every band seeks out a token female, but Heliotropes is completely lady operated, and we love them for it. No gimmicks, no nonsense, just some good ol’ fashioned rock-powered tunes.
Best Indie Supergroup: Comprised of Cassie Ramone (of Vivian Girls), Kevin Morby (of Woods) and Justin Sullivan (of Bossy), the lo-fi, garage rock timbre of The Babies translated beautifully to the South Street Seaport pier. Though they draw from experiences in each of their other respective bands, The Babies have a more rugged, enticing sound.