Lucas Crane, who kneeled on the floor as if in pain, singing into a rickety headphones and manipulating, among other things, a pair of cassette players connected to a mixer and crossfader. First, it showed all its cards, never ambivalent about its psychedelic noise-folk goals, and second, it was lackluster, except for G. The Woodsist label, which has released material by Wavves and Blank Dogs, is run by Jeremy Earl, the singer of the band Woods, which was the most anomalous group on the bill. Atlas asked audience members for keys to rattle. On “In the City (Contact High)” and “Controlled Karaoke,” Anthony Atlas sang bittersweet lyrics while Sean Paul Presley shut his eyes and sang high-pitched harmony. Nodzzz, a three-piece group from the Bay Area, played alluringly straightforward pop from its self-titled 2008 debut album (What’s Your Rupture?), with the slightest shroud of fuzz. Mike Sniper, the man behind Blank Dogs, played the show with a black hoodie pulled over his head and with his vocals heavily distorted, even when bantering between songs.
Here the filters were the darker strains of 1980s new wave, as heard on the excellent “Setting Fire to Your House.” This wholly enveloping set was, fortunately, far less polished than the most recent Blank Dogs release, “The Fields” (Woodsist), one of several the band has put out in myriad formats (cassette, 7-inch single, etc.) in the last two years. Wavves, which performed last on the lineup of bands here, was immediately preceded by Blank Dogs, from Brooklyn, another one-man project that required multiple bodies (five in this case) to recreate its sound live and which also buries its melodic gifts in rivers of distortion. Ulsh keeping brutal time on the cymbal, “So Bored,” “Beach Demon” and “California Goths” were punchy and brisk. Williams’s pitch wasn’t perfect, though it often was his songs are rigorously constructed. With the drummer Ryan Ulsh, Wavves was a dynamic, thrilling two-piece outfit here. (The album is to be released this week on iTunes and next month on CD.) His terrific second album, “Wavvves” (Fat Possum), teems with scrappy, energetic, summery chunks of noisy pop: smart-aleckyness via Weezer, cooing via the Beach Boys, all masked by digital effects and a thick garage-rock haze. Williams, a one-man band from San Diego who records as Wavves, but crispness is. And notes.) Musing about whether he could pull off a particular number, he demurred “No. Was his guitar tuned properly? (It was not.) Could he hit the notes the next song required? (Define hit. Not at the hair, but at less likely concerns. But after nearly every song he stopped for a look in the virtual mirror. Nathan Williams’s starter Flock of Seagulls haircut was silly with sweat, slapping at his face and neck as he jerked around on the tiny stage at Less Artists More Condos in the West Village on Saturday night.
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