NYTimes coverage, which I think not only speaks to the Festival, but music in general in 2003:
July 22, 2003
Underground Bands Climb Into the Sun and See Their Shadows
By KELEFA SANNEH
If you want to give a good beach party, you'll need a familiar soundtrack. The safest bet is to hire a bunch of D.J.'s to spin records everyone loves. If you don't want D.J.'s, you can hire a bunch of cover bands to play songs everyone loves. And if you don't want cover bands, you can hire a bunch of retro-rock acts to resurrect styles everyone loves.
On Saturday The Village Voice organized its third annual Siren Music Festival, bringing 14 bands to two stages at Coney Island, overlooking what must be one of the least bucolic beaches in the world. These were bands and fans who typically encounter one another late at night, in underlighted clubs. All afternoon, up and down the boardwalk, unsuspecting beachgoers mingled with dazed-looking hipsters, blinking in the sunlight. The lineup wasn't adventurous, but it also wasn't misguided; these days the rock 'n' roll underground runs on nostalgia, and most of Saturday's acts reflected this peculiar trend.
The Witnesses imitated the early Rolling Stones, while the Datsuns reprised the faster, slicker sound of 1970's hard rock. Each band had mastered the style it loved â?? and the Datsuns in particular proved their devotion by squeezing into perilously tight pants â?? but it wasn't clear why.
The Kills, a man and a woman, eagerly embraced the limitations of their chosen style, emphasizing washed-out blues riffs and monotonous prerecorded rhythm tracks. During "Kissy Kissy," the woman, VV, croaked, over and over again, "It's been a long time coming."
At 3 it was time for !!! (usually pronounced "Chk, Chk, Chk"), a Brooklyn octet with a knack for stealing shows. Virtually alone among the Siren acts !!! sounded even better than the band it was ripping off, in this case Liquid Liquid, a tense, minimalist funk act from the early 80's.
The music of !!! is based on heavy, clattering beats, filled out with loping bass lines and emaciated guitar and sometimes topped with horn blasts or chanted lyrics or occasionally screams from the roller coaster nearby.
The set ended with !!!'s current single, "Me & Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard (A True Story)," a pulsatile track that posits dancing as a form of civic rebellion. If the popularity of retro-rock continues, expect to see !!! one-upped by some smartly-dressed group from England railing against Abraham D. Beame.
Hot Hot Heat, from Victoria, British Columbia, used choppy instrumental parts to back preening vocals that owed a big debt to New Wave.
It was 5:30, and the beer and hot dogs (along with the broiling sun) had taken their toll on the audience. Still, after the last song â?? an invigorating spring through "This Town" â?? the glassy-eyed fans mustered enough energy to applaud the day's most entertaining set.
The only nonrock act of the day was Northern State, an all-female hip-hop trio from Long Island that borrows its rhyme style from the Beastie Boys, circa 1986. It can be fun to watch the three rappers trade lines, although it's hard not to wish the lines were better. Hip-hop lyrics may have hit an all-time low with the couplet "I'm lean, I'm mean, I'm clean, I'm not 17/ I'm the hottest girl rapper that you know you ever seen."
While most of these bands seemed eager to please, Oneida seemed just as eager to irritate, which was a welcome change of pace. The members accompanied discombobulated guitar with belligerent drums and sometimes a crude keyboard that sounded like a touch-tone phone.
One song seemed to have a shouted vocal line that went: "Slow down! Slow down! Use your brakes!" But for some reason the vocals got quieter when you got nearer the stage and further from the go-kart track.
A pair of more introspective acts, Ted Leo/Pharmacists and Idlewild, bucked the day's trend by emphasizing songwriting over sound, but the real anomaly was the headliner, Modest Mouse, an old-fashioned indie-rock band from the old days before all the new bands wanted to sound like old bands. Modest Mouse's set was long and uneven and challenging and â?? most of all â?? ambitious. For better and for worse Isaac Brock is a front man who seems to live in a world of his own invention, a place where folk music means grinding dissonance and off-kilter riffs and sudden musical shifts and shouted rants.
That doesn't mean it was always fun to hear Mr. Brock bellowing while his band bashed away. But his best songs can make you feel as if you're peering into a vast, weird world full of warped parables and cryptic observations.
While the other acts wanted to inspire a dance party, it seemed Mr. Brock wanted to inspire a mass delusion, and when the crowd joined in on "Cowboy Dan" â?? shouting, "Every time you think you're walking, you're just moving the ground/ Every time you think you're talking, you're just moving your mouth/ Every time you think you're looking, you're just looking down" â?? it seemed clear that he had succeeded.
