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Laura Barrett [Emo's Jr.; 12:15 p.m.]




Laura Barrett is that quirky, crafty, half-hip/half-nerdy friend who miraculously managed to escape puberty with her imagination fully intact and who never ceases to charm you with her wiles and whimsy. Like one Joanna Newsom, she's embraced an atypical instrument (the kalimba), she has a serious childlike streak, and her songs have a certain emotional swoop to them that belie their innocent qualities. Yet unlike Newsom, whose ambitious compositions have found a comfortable home in orchestra halls by now, Barrett's tunes seem custom made for house shows and gatherings of friends. They didn't mingle so well with the strangers packed in at Emo's Jr., but then again, who or what does mingle well on a Wednesday just after noon?

Planningtorock [SESAC Day Stage Café; 3 p.m.]

Of the 13 or so performances I witnessed on Wednesday, the most eye-opening by far belonged to Planningtorock, who spent the entirety of this brief afternoon set perched on a table, with avant-garde video projections behind her and a pair of homemade space helmets beside her that she would occasionally don.

Taken together, her status as a British expatriate in Berlin, penchant for ridiculous headgear, and tendency to do unusual things with her voice all tempt me to brand her a female Jamie Lidell, though she's too willfully eccentric and stylistically unhinged to cultivate an audience on his level. As performance art, however, this was pretty exciting stuff.

The Russian Futurists [Habana Calle 6 Patio; 11 p.m.]






Early in this set Russian Futurists mastermind Matthew Adam Hart accused the audience of being a bit "static," though the same charge might have been leveled at him. While Hart is more or less solely responsible for the infectious, effervescent pop found on the Russian Futurists' three excellent albums, live he has a guitarist, keyboardist, and drummer conjuring most of the music, leaving him to twist a few knobs and sing.

It would have been nice to see Hart take advantage of this relative freedom and just let loose some more, to really inhabit the frontman role that I'm sure he's more than cut out for. We got glimpses of what might have been in Hart's steady stream of between-song wisecracks ("Okay guys," he quipped late in the set, "we have one more and it's called 'We Just Got to Austin and We're Looking to Buy Drugs Right Away'"). I'd love to see that sort of mischief manifest itself in the performance.

But we'll cut the guy some slack; this gig marked the Canadian band's first Stateside appearance since being turned away at the border during a Caribou/Junior Boys tour in 2005, and they were probably on their best behavior (apart from soliciting the audience for drugs, of course). Also, they hit pretty much all the RF catalog high points-- "Let's Get Ready to Crumble", "Paul Simon", "Precious Metals"-- and even whipped out a (okay, a little goofy) cover of Sally Shapiro's "I'll Be by Your Side"!

Gowns [Habana Calle 6; 12:10 p.m.]






Like Gowns' fantastic 2007 album Red State, this set was positively charged with desperate energies and highlighted by moments of profound focus and clarity. During those brightest moments (light and brightness being a leitmotif of Red State) it feels as though Gowns are grasping at some quintessential truth, and in so doing, tottering at the edge of oblivion. And then oblivion always wins. Dear world: Please produce more bands like this one. Love, Matthew.

Silje Nes [The Velveeta Room; 1 a.m.]




There's something oddly fascinating about watching someone take the electric guitar-- the instrument that brought popular music performance out of the parlor-- and use it to create delicate percussive effects and faint resonances, all of which fly in the face of the instrument's traditional macho and phallic associations. Silje Nes here essentially turned the electric into a parlor instrument like its forbearer, creating an intricate sound-cocoon that felt a million miles away from the chaos raging just outside on 6th Street. That's pretty goddamned punk rock, if you think about it.

Additional Photos:

Radar Bros. [Emo's Jr.; 1 p.m.]


Mala Rodriguez [SESAC Day Stage Café; 2:30 p.m.]


Shearwater [Mohawk Patio; 4 p.m.]






The Wedding Present's David Gedge and Terry de Castro [Emo's Annex; 5:15 p.m.]


Abigail Washburn/Sparrow Quartet (featuring Béla Fleck) [Mother Egan's; 6:30 p.m.]