Noise Pop 2010, Part 2: Bradford Cox gets comfortable while Mirah and Thao Nguyen knock the pop out of Noise Pop

February 26-27, 2010, in San Francisco

By Katherine Hoffert
Published: March 1st, 2010 | 9:00pm

Friday night started with the Mary Chain-infused dance party of Magic Wands who brought New Wave–inspired fun as well as giant tiger heads and strobe lights; and local trio Geographer who treated the crowd at the Great American Music Hall to lush, heart-rendering indie-pop swoops.

The night’s headliner, Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, took the stage under his solo pseudonym Atlas Sound and was accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, harmonica, and a board of pedals at his feet. While Cox’s approach remained a mystery, it was clear that his set would reach far beyond the collaborations and studio production of his latest release, Logos (4AD). And it did. As Cox created a whole new palette of sounds from a chair in the middle of the stage — his guitar rarely sounding like a guitar and his voice switching from instrument to lyrics — Cox looped layer upon layer and bent pop into pastoral psych, all while keeping the beat with his tapping foot.

While Cox let some songs zone out to the brink of disorientation and then some build up until they were almost overcrowded — he pulled things back into focus just in time, while undressing the songs back down to their skeletons. As life imitated art and Cox took off his jacket, he joked he was recreating the Logos cover art and launched into “An Orchid,” a lyrically naked but sonically rich song from the album.

In addition to proving his song architecture genius, Cox also revealed that he sometimes doesn’t know when to stop. “Have I done this before? An hour-long encore?” The tradeoff was that his stories were actually funny (“I bought a bat in a glass case today,” he said, referring to local taxidermy wonderland Paxton Gate). He also used the extra time onstage to play everyone’s requests, which ranged from album tracks to songs released via a “virtual 7-inch” on his blog. All in all, it was one triumphant set — and a very long night.

Mirah and Thao Nguyen’s Saturday night collaboration at the Swedish American Hall was much greater than the sum of its parts — if that is even possible. The set started with Nguyen performing “Know Better Learn Faster,” the title track off her latest album. The duo then proceeded by not only singing each other’s songs (Mirah’s “Telephone Wires” granted a whole new moodiness courtesy of Nguyen’s bluesy vocals), but also by expanding their sound for a totally novel experience — one of those “once in a lifetime” moments that are the essence of music festivals.

As she moved from guitar to drums to banjo to bongos, Nguyen played with her whole body while the passion and frustration she often brings to her music added a new kind of tension to Mirah’s melodically tight songs. The contrast in their vocal tones was especially effective on Mirah’s “We’re Both So Sorry,” which sounded like two people singing the same thing but not hearing the other.

The two also took the opportunity to perform a new call-and-response song of Nguyen’s where Mirah was the voice of “the asshole” (“a character loosely based around myself,” according to Nguyen), and she was “the non-asshole.” The musical guests — drummer Ezra Lipp and vocalists Mike Deni (of Geographer) and Kacey Johansing — especially came in handy on Mirah’s “Pollen,” which became a brilliant a cappella song as everyone snapped and sang “ooh-bah-dada.”

For a show that could have been very quiet, Mirah and Nguyen made it feel huge yet intimate, sometimes with frantic handclapping and stomping percussion and sometimes with beatboxing. For the final song, Mirah turned on her pop diva switch and belted out her song “The Garden” with complete abandon. That alone could have made it the best Noise Pop show of the week.

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For more photos from Noise Pop 2010, Part 2, see Venus Zine's Flickr page

Noise Pop 2010, Part 1: Lennon and Ono monopolize the night and Zee Avi is downright "Poppy"