For Your Amusement

A roll call of this year's bands at Coney Island's favorite freak show

Comments (0) Tuesday, Jul 6 2004

Saturday, July 17, at noon, Coney Island, Brooklyn; Main Stage, 10th Street and Surf Avenue; Stillwell Stage, Stillwell Avenue and Surf Avenue; villagevoice.com/siren

illustration: Paul Antonson

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DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
Main Stage at 7:30
Underground rock's biggest success story right now, Death Cab have proven that even a wimpy little indie band can still break through to a mass audience. Sure, exposure on The O.C. and frontman Ben Gibbard's cutie-pie good looks have helped, but it's the Seattle group's dreamy guitar epics and Gibbard's hopelessly romantic lyrics that have propelled them into the hearts of lovesick teenagers everywhere. PHILLIPS

BLONDE REDHEAD
Main Stage at 6
Blonde Redhead are the soundtrack to lucid dreams—the ones where you know you are dreaming yet you can fly and are riding around on magical unicorns. The new CD, Misery Is a Butterfly, continues spinning the kaleidoscope of psychedelic-pop goodness and shifting minor chords, but the melancholy is never a downer. The result: dancey rockout euphoria! They've grown far beyond their indie-rock roots—more like Serge Gainsbourg gone art-rock—seeing them outdoors and at night should be a perfect setting. BOSLER

AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD
Stillwell Stage at 8
They built their reputation by smashing instruments onstage, but the Austin, Texas, foursome have grown into their grand gestures on record. The music is no longer a vehicle for their antics, but a sort of sublimated rage, cloudy, unpredictable, and very often weirdly pretty—broken free from emo's choreographed steps. The roller-coaster will have a tremendous sound to compete with. CATUCCI

MISSION OF BURMA
Stillwell Stage at 6:30
Why aren't these guys headlining? They're one of the most original, important, and influential rock bands of the past two decades. They wrote "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" and "Academy Fight Song," and R.E.M. even covered the latter. Anyway, at least they're playing, and after nearly 20 years apart, they still sound miles ahead of most bands—the kids could learn a lot from these old men. Prepare to be blown away by classics, as well as songs from the band's incredible new album, ONoffON (Matador). SWITZER

HAR MAR SUPERSTAR
Main Stage at 5
Is this for real? Does this hairy, overweight white guy from Minnesota actually think he's the second coming of Prince? And do all those ladies screaming and throwing their panties truly find him sexy? Decide for yourself when ex-punk and Starsky & Hutch star Sean Tillman brings his r&b loverman act to Siren (incidentally, he's the only non-rock act on the bill). Expect dirty dancing and lots of skin. PHILLIPS

TV ON THE RADIO
Main Stage at 4
These guys are everywhere—possibly only Moby and Chloë Sevigny are up in your grill as much as these art-pop, doo-wop indie-electro-soul-rockers—but unlike Moby, they prove that that which floats to the top does not have to stink. Shuffling through many incarnations the live show, as of late, is more of an amped-up version of their dynamic and beautiful studio trickery. With thousands of hot sweaty bodies singing and dancing along—prepare to be dazzled! BOSLER

ELECTRIC SIX
Stillwell Stage at 5:30
You'd never know that they're friends with Jack White: The totally uncool Detroit collective throws down genre-pilfering party cuts only dorks would be unselfconscious enough to make. You know the ones—those disco stews of frenetic falsetto and unabashed posing, "Danger! High Voltage" and "Gay Bar." Live, they've got the manpower and moves it takes to rock sun-baked bodies. CATUCCI

VUE
Main Stage at 3
This San Francisco five-piece has been hovering under the radar as "the next big thing" for five years, playing bluesy garage-punk since before it was all the rage. Their sound has been polished enough for the majors, but not so much that the rough edges don't break through. Maybe Vue's time has finally come, and you can say you saw them when. PHILLIPS

THE FIERY FURNACES
Main Stage at 2
Everyone knows twins communicate at heightened levels; this sister-brother Brooklyn duo proves that everyday siblings have their own language, too. At once epic and fluffily twee, each Furnaces composition ranges countless moods, melodies, and rhythms, like a conversation between people too close to agree on anything or go back to their own room. Not all of it's pleasant, exactly, but you probably guessed that. CATUCCI

THE FEVER
Stillwell Stage at 4:30
Too many new dance-punk bands get so caught up in cool ironic detachment, they forget that this music is supposed to be fun. Not the Fever, five scruffy Brooklynites unafraid of melting '80s keyboard cheese all over their taut grooves, and of covering Sheila E. and Outkast. Frontman Geremy Jasper yelps like a mad dog, drummer Achilles hammers out ponytail-bopping beats, guitarist Chris Sanchez plays wiry leads. And hipsters shake it like a Polaroid picture. PHILLIPS

THE CONSTANTINES
Stillwell Stage at 3:30
Tireless Canadian sextet the Constantines treat every show like it's their last, lending their grandeur just the subtlest whiff of crazed depravity, which when you think about it, smells like rock. Emphasis on subtle, though. For the most part these genial tambourine-slapping keyboard-pumping lads just want to make believers out of you. ROSEN