REVIEW: Noise Pop 30 is San Francisco’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Festival
WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE FOR THE NIGHT? – Are you an indie kid with a Mario plushie at the No Vacation concert? Or are you four PBRs in, sweaty and awkward at the FIDLAR show? Do you want to sit at a table for two at the intimate Mount Eerie set, or do you want to help astronaut backup dancers crowdsurf at the STRFKR show? For seven nights you can witness something totally new, and it all happens within the seven-mile wide city of San Francisco.
Noise Pop Festival celebrated its 30-year anniversary this past week, showcasing over 100 musical acts across over 10 different independent venues. Yo La Tengo, Duster, and Boy Harsher headlined the festival, all with sold out shows. Among the music festival were bar crawls at Kilowatt and Zeitgeist, week-long happy hours at Bender’s, art galleries, music documentary screenings, and more.
Like TikTok’s For You page, scarily accurate at reading your deepest inner thoughts, it’s as if the bookers for Noise Pop Festival knew which artists Bay area dwellers loved the most. The sold-outedness of the shows spoke volumes– both No Vacation and FIDLAR’s opening night shows were at capacity, each headliner show was impossible to get into without advanced reservations, and even L.A. Witch’s weekend residency at Zeitgeist filled up quick. Like any music festival, it’s impossible to see every artist you love at once. The good thing about Noise Pop Festival is that any show you hit is going to be a bang for your buck.
FIDLAR kicked off the festival week at Bottom of the Hill on Monday with longtime tour buds Liily. The last time FIDLAR played San Francisco was less than six months ago, playing The Fillmore, a venue with a capacity of 1,300 people. Bottom of the Hill is a mere 246. The audience was pushed to the depths of the bar and soundboard, people sitting on top of ledges and pooling at the side of the stage. Two girls broke the house’s “no crowdsurfing” rule almost immediately, security pulled out men for being too drunk– it was everything a FIDLAR show is notorious for.
photo courtesy of Addie Briggs
Midweek, anyone who didn’t grab tickets for Yo La Tengo’s packed show at The Fillmore could travel a mile and a half down to Market Street for a night of shoegaze at Cafe du Nord. There was something exclusively cool about Slow Crush’s show with openers Death Bells and trauma ray. From trauma ray’s first song “Liftoff” to Slow Crush’s closer “Glow,” the audience drowned in sound and bathed in rainbow light. The band’s shadows danced on the wall like they were underwater. Each band came from all over the place– Belgium, Australia, and Texas, respectively– and as an audience member congregating in the basement club, it felt lucky to witness these bands in our little corner of the world.
Oakland dwellers Fake Fruit became Thursday night headliners at the Rickshaw Stop after original headliners Flasher made a last minute cancellation. Ian Sweet traveled from LA as an additional opener, solidifying the impressive bill alongside Juicebumps and The Band Ice Cream. Self-proclaimed “spank rock” project Juicebumps gave one of the most interesting performances of the week. Dressed in all white and silver face paint, their performance had similar artistry to Talking Heads. Between the alien synthesizer noises, the lead weaves a narrative throughout their set (“We aren’t the Juicebumps you know… we killed the old Juicebumps”). Ian Sweet, despite a bout of technical difficulties, energized the crowd with her kaleidoscopic indie pop performance and Coldplay-love confessions, playing her hits like “f*ckthat,” “Sword,” and her cover of “Yellow.” Fake Fruit took their headlining upgrade and ran with it– the band played mostly new songs off their upcoming record alongside classics like “Milkman” and “Old Skin.” Echoing Ian Sweet’s comment about the show– “I just feel like we’re all hanging out!”-- Fake Fruit made sure to enjoy themselves onstage. Lead Hannah D’Amato took one of the songs to solve a Rubix cube onstage, later ending with a fiery performance of their Spanish rendition of “No Mutuals,” “No Mutuas.”
By the time the weekend rolled around, the Bay area was feeling the full effect of the winter storm. San Jose and Santa Cruz saw a record amount of snow, many California freeways shut down, and San Francisco’s moody climate was amplified with rain and hail. The bulk of the movie documentary screenings were pushed to April, including The Elephant 6 Recording Co., The Flaming Lips Space Bubble Concert: Live in Oklahoma 2021, and Free Tibet. A couple of weekend concerts got canceled as well, including Charlie Hickey, Curtis Waters, and Jackie Hayes. However, the city seemed unphased and continued to rage on.
photo courtesy of Skylar Heyveld
Seeing Duster perform at the Regency Ballroom Friday night was as much of a spectacle as any fan would have predicted. The diversity of the crowd was confusing and beautiful: older folks who’ve been fans of Duster since the 90s filled the balcony and crowded near the back end, while kids born no earlier than 2005 took over most of the space. Girls in red and white renaissance dresses danced kitschily in the hall in between sets. Over half the crowd swirled into a circle pit during heavy shoegaze opener julie, knowing all the words even through the discordant reverberation. Duster came on and opened with “The Twins / Romantica” off their seminal debut Stratosphere. As the song ended, a friend I met at the venue turned to me with a grin. “It’s starting,” they said. All of a sudden, the room fills with the wirey buzz of “Orbitron,” and flesh hit flesh in chaos. The band closed out with “Stars Will Fall,” emotion and awe flooding the crowd as they stood, rendering everyone speechless.
The week was full of firsts– on Saturday night, dark wave sweetheart Mareux made his San Francisco debut at Great American Music Hall. The following Sunday, Singapore indie-pop project Sobs embarked on their first U.S. tour starting with a nearly sold-out crowd at Brick & Mortar. Torrey and Maggie Gently started the night off, Torrey with a sincere and airy brand of indie and with Maggie Gently having an edgier, Wheatus-like sound. Sobs played most songs off their latest record, Air Guitar, lead singer Celine with her blue bangs and bubbly stage presence keeping the audience engaged even through technical difficulties (“I’m nervouuuuus!” she opened with). Whether it was poking fun at bassist Zhang Bo dressed in a Weezer shirt or singing “Blame It” by Jamie Fox in between songs, the band led an effervescent performance, officially ending this year’s Noise Pop festival.
photo courtesy of Addie Briggs
Three decades led Noise Pop to this point. The beauty is in the freedom people have to choose the way they celebrate it. You can savor one night out of the work week to see your favorite band or you can rage for seven nights in a row. No matter how the adventure went, the week of independent arts and music ended with a satisfied sigh. Noise Pop Festival is the regular San Francisco scene on acid at the end of the day. If we were to say these shows were our last for a while, that would be a lie. After all, the ethos of Noise Pop is to champion these scenes, to never let them die out. We won’t let them.
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weekly tunes playlist has been updated! new tracks from @furtradeband, @pecqband, @garryfool & more! check it out! https://t.co/ToFU0R6YGo