Polvo and Les Savy Fav at Northside Festival, Newtown Barge Park, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, June 27, 2010

Another Northside Festival has come and gone. Polvo served up a hot plate of start-stop-quiet-loud rock with tons of complicated chord changes. It was a late-nineties indie explosion!

Band of Horses with Grizzly Bear and Karen Elson, Williamsburg Waterfront, Brooklyn, June 20, 2010

Band of Horses headlined a very not-free show at the Williamsburg Waterfront (which will ostensibly be the home of another slate of free summer shows at some point in the near future). You can check out the schedule of remaining paid shows over at (ironically enough) FREEwilliamsburg. The state police were out en masse to enforce the downright byzantine alcohol and crowd-control rules. It was all a bit like running through a maze, but your only reward at the end was a tiny cup of $6 beer.

Karen Elson (aka Mrs. Jack White) and her band—all dressed in matching peach-colored outfits—started the show with a nice set of easy, country-fried rock, which ended with a cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch."