A friend of mine who happened to be visiting from Chicago during Bazooka! Fest joked that the festival was split between \u201cthe Elder Millennial Stage\u201d and \u201cthe Hallogallo<\/a> stage.\u201d TV Buddha were standout representatives for the latter, playing an afternoon set of spry psych-pop. The Chicago band didn\u2019t mess much with their tried-and-true, crowd pleasing formula: bright guitar tones, songs spun tightly around the simple hooks at the center, everything delivered with an easy yet energetic affect.\u00a0<\/p>\n If Hallogallo had a New York equivalent, at least in the sense of a particular publication that\u2019s become synonymous with the city\u2019s DIY scene, it would be GUNK<\/a>, a print and online zine publishing reviews, interviews, essays, scene reports, and a monthly calendar of New York shows. I arrive early on Day 2 to catch a set from one of the best GUNK-core bands, The Alaskas. Their latest album, Unalaska, came out just two days earlier, and its minimalistic 8track recordings take on a grander, campier life of their own onstage, to the point that the band sometimes feels like if one of the fake dive bars off Myrtle Avenue had an animatronic band\u2014fitting for a band with titles things like \u201cM Train\u201d and \u201cWeekend at Birdy\u2019s\u201d and songs sung from the perspectives of pumpkins plucked from the dirt and goldfish who yearn for the sea. When he\u2019s not singing, lead singer Gavin Caine uses the band\u2019s nervy jangle punk instrumentals as backing music to hop around the stage like he\u2019s got springs attached to the soles of shoes. I run into Lex Walton<\/a> during The Alaskas\u2019 set. \u201cAren\u2019t they great?\u201d she shouts. She\u2019s barely audible over their set, but I nod enthusiastically in agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Walton closed the previous night with a set backed by a veritable supergroup that included Malcolm on the tambourine, Carmen Esperanza (Pop Music Fever Dream) on bass, Matthew Danger Lippman (a touring member of Of Montreal) on guitar, Emerson Borakove (Prairie Princess) on keys, Harmony Cuddle on the drums, and Ivy Wolk singing backup. Informally billed as Lex Walton\u2019s Instant Gratification, the band played mostly unreleased songs\u2014\u201cFor Thee I Sing,\u201d the anxious and excoriating opener off her Sub Pop debut, was particularly roof-tearing live, as was \u201cHIPSTER RUNOFF,\u201d a track on which Walton sings about \u201chypnagogic Republicans\u201d and \u201cshitgaze landlords.\u201d The tongue-in-cheek attitude of Walton\u2019s protest songs doesn\u2019t undercut her propensity for chasing discomfort for the sake of making affecting, abrasive art. Along with her now-signature headset microphone, Walton also sported an electric guitar bearing a Westboro Baptist Church slogan that\u2019s also the name of one of her new songs. Earlier this summer, Walton and Borakove got booed in Denver while opening for Geese as a satirical band called Airy Foist<\/a>, in perhaps the greatest post-Ween act of audience-trolling (and possibly Geese\u2019s way of proverbially firing a gun in the air to keep the rent low).\u00a0<\/p>\n Walton and co were playing the Wood Shop stage, which was two doors down from the main stage at the Meadows. The Bazooka! Fest setup was a bit odd; to get from one stage to the other you had to exit one venue and enter the other one through both of their front doors. To the organizers\u2019 credit, most sets were staggered enough (especially the ones that came later in the day) that there was little overlap. The bands performing at the Wood Shop admittedly got the short end of the stick, what with the Wood Shop\u2019s narrow, L-shaped layout and echoey sound. I spent most of the weekend at the Meadows but some of my favorite sets were Wood Shop ones. Local and confusingly stylized band Love, Burns played some wildly fun surf-rock songs. I was shocked to find out that they were a New York band (I later learned that lead singer Phil Sutton is from London, but mid-set, I texted a friend that I was watching a band that was \u201ceither Australian or British. Do Australian people talk about going to \u2018the pubs\u2019 a lot? That feels like a British thing\u201d). I was early to Sunshine Convention\u2019s set at the Wood Shop\u2014I knew I wanted to see the band making the entire festival happen. The crowd was sparse at first but by their second or third song, the room was full of people dancing along to their sunny, grunge-inflected power pop\u2014perfect accompaniment for a dog days of summer afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back at the Meadows, I caught DIY popstar Sadie Dupuis\u2019 set as Sad13<\/a> (I\u2019d seen her perform with Speedy Ortiz<\/a> before, but live cuts from her new Sad13 record 1313 really let her voice shine in a light that I hadn\u2019t seen it in before), followed by Colleen Green, whose set of snappy power pop was accompanied by a loop of 80s jazzercise videos projected onto the backdrop behind her. The energy onstage was fantastic and more people should\u2019ve been dancing. One guy nearby was loudly talking about a zit on his forehead and another came up to me to hand-deliver a burned CD of songs from his shitgaze band. After the set when we went to the patio, someone else handed me another copy of the same CD. They\u2019re both still in my purse. If anybody has a CD player I can use to listen to one of them and\/or wants to take my extra copy, let me know.\u00a0<\/p>\n When we came back inside, Cloud Nothings<\/a> were kicking off their set with no introduction beyond a car alarm guitar riff and some drawn out yelps into the mic\u2014no other intro needed, honestly. I lost my shit upon hearing \u201cWasted Days\u201d live, a song that always reminds me of the overwhelming guilt and melancholy that comes at the back half of August, where you\u2019re scrambling to do something with what remains of your summer. And if \u201cWasted Days\u201d encapsulates that mood in a song, that\u2019s basically Times New Viking<\/a>\u2019s entire discography. This is the time of year where I tend to listen to them the most. I was shocked by the clarity of this recently reunited band who, on their records, always sound like they\u2019re clawing against cling-wrapped layers of feedback and lo-fi fuzz. At the Meadows on Saturday night, they sounded like they could cut glass.<\/p>\n Day 1 at the Meadows saved the loudest for last, but the following night it was the opposite. Joanna Sternberg<\/a> drew a hushed, rapt crowd with a set of folk and jazz songs as charming and conversational as their stage banter about awkward interactions with their neighbors. The room was packed by the time Stephin Merritt and his keyboardist\/duet partner took the stage. He opened with two crowd-pleasers: the newly viral \u201cAndrew In Drag\u201d and \u201cThe Book of Love,\u201d which had everyone singing along, incidentally harmonizing above Merritt\u2019s bassy dull roar. It was a tender set, lots of hugging, crying, slow-dancing, and the like, interspersed with the tracks like \u201cA Chicken With Its Head Cut Off\u201d and \u201cThe Day The Politicians Died\u201d interspersed for some levity\u2014that\u2019s The Magnetic Fields<\/a> Special.\u00a0<\/p>\n The night wound down with an acoustic solo set from Destroyer<\/a>\u2019s Dan Bejar. I was curious to see how his normally elaborate arrangements would adapt to such minimalistic proportions, but Bejar\u2019s voice, infinitely adept at twisting itself into whatever shape the song calls for and filling in all its cracks, was up for the job. His stripped-back rendition of Have We Met opener \u201cCrimson Tide\u201d was particularly stunning. \u201cWho could care less on a night like this?\u201d Bejar mused drolly. As far as nights like these go, they were pretty damn good ones.<\/p>\n Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in\u00a0Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound,\u00a0and her \u201cmostly about music\u201d newsletter,\u00a0Our Band Could Be Your Wife<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shows run together when they\u2019re making up so many of your nights. 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