*pictured above: Islands performing on the Main Stage

Seven years ago I ventured out to the Village Voice’s inaugural Siren Music Festival. I’d only been living in the city for twelve days, I didn’t have a whole lot of extra spending money, and I didn’t know anyone who’d be there except for the eight bands on the bill. It was my first visit ever to Coney Island and I had a blast; vowing to return again and again. I can’t say that I’ve attended every year since, but I have managed to make it out to enough Sirens to know that EAR FARM owed it to ourselves to cover this year’s Siren Music Festival with a few extra voices and cameras. What follows are brief opinions of the concerts we saw, a few MP3s for you to download, and slideshows of each band that performed at Siren this year. Special thanks go out to our guest contributors for helping us be everywhere at all times, and big ups to The Village Voice for yet another fantastic festival. Note: for individual photo credits, click on each picture or head over to EF’s Flickr page.

• 
  Dragons of Zynth (above): 1:00pm, Main Stage - “War Lover”
  Dragons of Zynth seemed a natural choice to open the Siren floodgates: a neon burst of fuzzy soul and clamoring rock psychedelia that hung low and spread satisfyingly throughout the thick early afternoon haze. It’s a sound that rode largely on bassist Autry’s entrancing grooves and singer/keyboardist Aku’s textured croon. Not a bad way to suffer through 175 degree heat and humidity. - Mike Grimes
• 
  These Are Powers (above): 1:30pm, Stillwell Stage - “Little Sisters of Beijing”
  “I know you, not your name but your game.” So says Samantha Mathis to mysterious pirate radio shock-jock Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume. It was a testament to familiarity without recognition, and watching These Are Powers pogo through a set of yelps, gurgling electronics, splintered basslines, and tribal rhythms (fed through synthetic devices), I couldn’t get this line out of my head. It’s as though they took all the small parts of High Places, M.I.A., Kudu, Chairlift, and about a dozen other bands that don’t necessarily work and tried to force them together. - Mike Grimes
• 
  Parts & Labor (above): 2:00pm, Main Stage - “Fractured Skies”
  If there was a band not named Broken Social Scene that I was most looking forward to seeing for the first time, then Parts & Labor was that band. They’ve built a solid following over the years, thanks largely to their ability to get loud and constantly accelerate without losing a grip on melody. On Saturday, bolstered by the recent addition of guitarist/noisemaker Sarah Lipstate, the band scaled peaks of new wave influence only to dive right off and come crashing down in thunderous washes of four-piece nouveau punk. Parts & Labor provided the perfect body-moving soundtrack to broiling under the midday sun next to an eighty-one year old roller coaster. One of the best performances of the day.- Matt Tyson
• 
  Film School (above): 2:30pm, Stillwell Stage
  Back at the Stillwell Stage, Film School did their best to prove that swelling shoegaze anthems can blossom in the unkind setting of an unmercifully hot and bright daylight festival stage. It wasn’t the ideal setting for them, but they impressed in their impassioned connection with their material. Not the most innovative or engaging sound, but a solid set nonetheless. - Mike Grimes
• 
  The Dodos (above): 3:00pm, Main Stage - “The Ball”
  It’s 3pm, which means the first band of the day I’m dying to see is finally going on! (20 minutes later) It’s 3:20 which means the first band of the day I’m dying to see must be going on any second! Poor Dodos. Flying in (no pun intended, could dodobirds even fly?) for Siren before heading to the Pitchfork Festival on Sunday, they played without their own backline, prompting a series of unspecified technical difficulties. Hurried and perhaps a bit frazzled, they finally went on about 20 minutes late with singer/guitarist Meric Long exasperatedly turning to drummer Logan Kroeber and shrugging, “Fuck it, let’s just try ‘Ball’!” at which point they launched into an otherworldly version of “The Ball” and all became right in the universe. For about twenty minutes. At that point, not even a handful of songs into the set, they were forced to end their set to the protests of the entirety of Coney Island. It may have been the best twenty minutes of the day though. - Mike Grimes
• 
  Annuals (above): 3:30pm, Stillwell Stage - “Brother”
  As my hometown’s representation in the 2008 Siren Festival, Annuals seemingly stored up some trademark North Carolina heat and brought it with them to Coney Island; they were on fire. I haven’t seen the band this tight, epic, or on top of their game… ever. The new songs they played showed well-defined growth and intent, the songs from their first album pleased the appreciative audience, and the individual performances from each member of the band reached a level not seen by most other musicians that day. I’m just sayin’ - if you were miserably hot standing there at Siren this year, blame your heat stroke on the radiant heat coming from the Stillwell Stage around 3:30pm.

  As a bonus, check out the sketch of the band done by my good friend Franz. In his words: “I knew that the only way to draw everyone in the band was to draw like a madman from the moment they started playing. If the music is no good, my drawings will look like crap and I’ll quit early on. And then they began, my pen started to go crazy. I found myself just barely having enough time to draw all 6 of them. Annuals drove me to draw faster and damn the torpedoes of sweat that threatened to ruin each drawing! The music even convinced me to add some color once the drawings were in the computer. And I had to match the frenetic pace of the music and the drawings with just scribbles of color. Overall, it was good times.” Click the image below for a larger version. - Matt Tyson

  

• 
  Times New Viking (above): 4:00pm, Main Stage - “(My Head)/R.I.P. Allegory”
  At their best, Times New Viking remind me of what I love most about early ‘90s lo-fi rock: The songs are fun, the guitar is fuzzy and they steer clear of anything resembling production value. But halfway through the set, their songs start sounding really familiar and the whole thing begins to feel like a gimmick. Case in point: Chugging Jack in 100-degree heat does not make you seem hard-core; it makes you look like somebody who really wants to seem hard-core. - Rebecca Wilson
• 
  Jaguar Love (above): 4:30pm, Stillwell Stage - “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean”
  I thought maaaybe I’d like this band so I gave them a chance… after all, their drummer (Jay Clark) is one of my favorite musicians of the past ten years or so. One of my favorites when he’s playing guitar in Pretty Girls Make Graves. Playing drums in Jaguar Love? Notsomuch. - Matt Tyson
• 
  Ra Ra Riot (above): 5:00pm, Main Stage - “Each Year”
  Ra Ra Riot has already been through the ringer and back again. They’ve achieved an ultra-high indie buzz quotient in the past and have survived the departure of their original vocalist Shaw Flick as well as the tragic accidental drowning of original drummer John Pike. Through it all the band has maintained their unique ability to exude goodness and deliver chamber pop that’s consistently refreshing. I’m aware that that’s an amazingly over-used adjective but I stand by it in this case. Refreshing! On a day like the one we had this past Saturday (98° F), refreshing was precisely what I needed by 5:00pm. - Matt Tyson
• 
  Beach House (above): 5:30pm, Stillwell Stage - “Gila”
  Live, Beach House is spooky and mysterious, even in the middle of a blazing Coney Island afternoon. Victoria Legrand’s vocals are less dreamy and more down-to-earth than I expected, while a real drum kit also helped to draw their lovely songs down from the ether. Beach House is one of those bands that oozes sincerity during a performance, making their warm, lush songs even more likable. - Rebecca Wilson
• 
  Islands (above): 6:00pm, Main Stage - “The Arm”
  When you’ve seen Islands as many times as we have, you realize they have their “on” days and their “off” days. Saturday they were most definitely switched to ON. Instead of wilting in the heat or succumbing to the myriad of technical difficulties (busted mic stands, bizarre sound levels, waves of feedback) that plagued performers all day – “technical difficulties” being the phrase of the afternoon and evening – they seemed to invite it as just another element of chaos to throw into their sharply honed stage act. I guess that’s what happens when bad luck follows you around everywhere; you get used to it.

  That being the case, Nick Thorburn and crew instead focused on proving themselves to those unprivileged enough to never have experienced Islands before, which meant a smattering from their usual bag of tricks: an eccentric entrance (Nick wearing the Dodos’ beaten trashcan over his torso), a guest MC for “Where There’s A Will There’s a Whalebone” (with Nick looming behind him armed with sparklers), wry stage banter (“I suggest taking your pants off, it feels fucking awesome”), and all around rocking set. This isn’t to suggest it felt stale in any way; rather it was one of the more buoyant and lively sets they’ve delivered. - Mike Grimes

• 
  The Helio Sequence (above): 6:30pm, Stillwell Stage - “Blood Bleeds”
  The set from Portland duo the Helio Sequence was a welcome change of pace among a long stream of bands boasting crazy sound effects and big ensembles. Their deceivingly simplistic pop-folk-rock is the perfect reminder that straight-forward doesn’t mean boring. Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel contrasted catchier pop songs from their latest release, Keep Your Eyes Ahead (”Lately,” “Hallelujah”) with longer, experimental songs from earlier in their catalog (”Don’t Look Away,” “Harmonica Song”). They were the perfect aesthetic transition between the hazy, twinkling dream pop of Beach House and the bombastic rock ensemble of Broken Social Scene. - Taylor Long
• 
  Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks (above): 7:30pm, Main Stage - “Cold Son”
  We could say that SM & the Jicks closed out the Main Stage’s festivities with a set as sloppy and loose as the rickety Cyclone looming off to the side, but that analogy would be about as lazy as one of his solos on Saturday. I don’t know what happened since the last time we saw them, but it was clear that Malkmus didn’t feel like embarking on any extended guitar solos on this occasion. Which didn’t mean they avoided the long jams that permeate Real Emotional Trash, but rather in doing so they ventured more into shifting rhythmic patterns and creating squawking walls of noise.

  And guess what? It was still a completely rocking set. We can’t say it enough: when you have Janet Weiss as your drummer, you can do no wrong. Malkmus must have gotten the memo, choosing to defer to her graceful pummeling on more than a few occasions while saving the true gusto for crowd favorites such as “Jenny and the Ess-Dog”, “Phantasies”, “Pencil Rot” and - most inexplicably awesome - an encore cover of Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets To Paradise.” - Mike Grimes

• 
  Broken Social Scene (above): 8:00pm, Stillwell Stage
  My first time seeing Broken Social Scene (finally) was a tiny bit of a letdown. No wait. No letdown. They were amazing. But I mean, I was secretly hoping for one of the ladies of BSS-past to make an appearance (ideally Leslie Feist… likely Amy Millan… but maybe Emily Haines?) for a song or two. No such luck. So I’d gotten my hopes lifted by my own imagination. Idiot. Well, nearly as awesome -or, just kind of cool at the very least- was the performance of “7/4 Shoreline” that included vocals from a “random girl they just met an hour ago”. True? Watch it HERE and see what you think. I think she did a pretty good job.

  The audience did not, apparently, build up their own expectations in the same manner as I did. They were overwhelmingly appreciative and clappy and engrossed in the entirety of the all-male Broken Social Scene’s set. There were people perched on the tops of vending machines and precariously wobbling fences and the press/photo area nearly reached mosh pit status. Everyone was moving and yelling and fist-pumping and singing along. A highlight of the day? The highlight of the day. - Matt Tyson

In all that’s 10 very positive reviews out of 14 bands that played the 100% free, nearly 100° show at Coney Island this past Saturday. I’d say that makes Siren 2008 a blisteringly hot and sweaty and noisy success. If you’d like to see even more EF pictures taken at this year’s Siren Festival (crowd shots and scenic Coney Island pics) head on over to EAR FARM’s Flickr Page.

*above slideshows created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.