Noise and screams stifled any hint of melody, yet elevated a night of moody, lo-fi rock on Saturday at Music Hall of Williamsburg. The lineup, three bands from three different countries, represented a sampling of the 400 groups scattered around Brooklyn for the borough’s seventh annual Northside Festival.
Each set somehow produced unnerving excitement, drawing from American metal and post-punk influences. Over the course of two hours, the audience swelled along with the night’s sonic intensity. Up first was American Wrestlers, a one-man project from St. Louis by way of Scotland; Girl Band, four boys from Ireland, followed; and the Canadian headliner, Viet Cong, eventually filled the venue to its 500-person capacity.
But those who skipped the opener missed how Gary McClure reimagined the eight-track bedroom recordings that became American Wrestlers, the album he released in April. For this show he assembled a lineup that included his wife, Bridgette Imperial, on keyboards and guitar; bassist Ian Reitz and drummer Josh Van Hoorebeke helped fill out McClure’s lean compositions. They burned through the songs in a hurry, perhaps intentionally, abandoning the sluggish, fragile structures McClure captured on tape. They closed with “Kelly,” a tribute to a homeless man police killed years ago in California, “and anyone else who’s been beaten to death,” McClure deadpanned.
The tone shifted from from subdued to a screaming fit at 9:45, when the Dublin group Girl Band announced itself with the thick, shrill warning of a hurricane siren. It wasn’t clear what instrument was responsible for the outburst. But it foreshadowed more unsettling sounds to come. The music was fast, but not reckless; in control, yet unpredictable. Dara Kiely shrieked and tossed his hair while everyone else managed to play stoically and with breakneck urgency. One song lasted maybe ten seconds.
Calgary band Viet Cong took its time, allowing much of its heavy, often morose self-titled album to blossom and crystallize. Early on, singer and bassist Matt Flegel smirked. “We’re gonna bumble our way through as best we can,” he said, on the verge of giggling. They never bumbled once, and even brought “Continental Shelf” to a more electrifying, desolate place. Monty Munro and Danny Christiansen were especially thrilling to watch; they barely caught each other’s eyes as their guitars artfully slipped in and out of sync. Christiansen crouched in one dark corner of the stage; on the other side, Munro hid behind a Zach Galifianakis beard.
Then, a big finish: Viet Cong created a thrashing pattern at the very end, taunting and relentless in its repetition, a coda of two-note blasts as assertive and impassioned as anything played all night. For the first time all night the band was finally looking at each other. And they were smiling.
