Whartscape Day Four at Mica Parking Lot, Baltimore

Post Author: Nate Dorr

With Double Dagger, Dan Deacon, Future Islands, Parts and Labor, DDMMYYYY, Ponytail, Greg Gillis, and yeah, you missed it, didn’t you.

Continuing the piecemeal best-offing from Whartscape day three, here’s day four:

  • Three electronic noisemakers split a time slot giving us a rapid succession of Mincemeat or Tenspeed’s droning melodies from what appeared to be an effects pedal chain with no actual signal input, Narwhals’ gameboy melodies played from an actual gameboy while crowd-surfing, and Kyle H. Mabson’s V/VM-like Jock-Jams-devoured-by-harsh-feedback routine. “Y’all ready for this?!” VZRRRRMM.
  • [Mincemeat or Tenspeed]

  • Eyeball Skeleton, who could nearly mistaken for normal early-80s hardcore/punk band, were the singer and guitarist not born about 15 years after that stuff was in its prime (their Dad, probable source of this reference point, is also in the band). Eschewing the overt goofiness of their older stuff, they sounded startlingly convincing.
  • Dan Deacon gets virtually everyone to run in a giant circle during his typically ebullient set.
  • A rare live set from Hearts of Darknesses + Girl Talk remix team Trey Told ‘Em, who (disappointingly) played only one drawn out altered-grunge jam, but which seemed (promisingly) to be the start of a new, noisier path in pop reconstitution.

  • Melodrama is made fun again by Future Islands, whose lead singer invests twitchy electro backing tracks with near-excesses of human sentiment and has fairly appalling facial hair. Call them the anti-electroclash, and watch for their split 7″ with Dan Deacon due August 5.