Before I get stuck into the review of the bands I saw at this year’s Mod­ern Sky, I’d just like to say that, across the board this was a far bet­ter effort than last year. Even though Chaoyang Park was much closer to me per­son­ally, and despite the fact — or per­haps because of it — that Mod­ern Sky has put on more fes­ti­vals this year that I’m sur­prised any­one on their staff can still stand let alone set up stages and stalls, this one went off with­out a hitch. The hor­ren­dous lin­ing up issues that we expe­ri­enced at Straw­berry ear­lier this year weren’t present at all, either, and though they’d run out of sched­ule book­lets to hand out on the third day, every­thing else seemed to work out just fine. There was beer, good weather, and great atmos­phere — what more could you ask for?

Well, here’s what I got:

STEELY HEART 钢铁的心

I was… ten­ta­tive about see­ing these guys early in the after­noon again. The last time I saw Steely Heart was at the Max Star Fes­ti­val at Ditan, I was under­whelmed. I admit­ted, and it is true, that this band hon­estly shines at a dive bar when the band, crowd, and sound tech is drunk, but there were many rea­sons for the awk­ward per­for­mance that day. On this sunny Sat­ur­day after­noon, how­ever, Steely Heart did not fail to impress. They actu­ally got into each of the songs, and while their atti­tude on stage is still very much in the apa­thetic foot­steps of The Strokes, their energy was much more pal­pa­ble than at Max Star.

Unfor­tu­nately, the addi­tion of an awful synth track to each of their songs seems to be there to stay. I hate it. I reserve full judge­ment until next time I see them at a dive bar, but until then… I’m not impressed.

THE DANCERS

I’d heard a lot about these guys, see­ing as they were made up of some of the best of Chi­nese rock and punk. Unfor­tu­nately, their sound was a lit­tle too noisy and heavy for me to enjoy. Per­haps in a dif­fer­ent mood or mind­set, I might have enjoyed it; as it was, they were way off what I was expect­ing and not what I was inter­ested in seeing.

BLACK HEAD 黑撒

These guys had a great sound. They reminded me a lot of Nancheng Brother, and I sup­pose they do very sim­i­lar things. Nancheng Brother riff off of Bei­jing crosstalk per­for­mance and use tra­di­tional instru­ments to play rock music infused with that sound; Black Head uses a sim­i­lar per­for­mance tra­di­tion from Shaanxi province and has come out with some great folk rock fusion music. They also do a bit of rap/hip-hop, tap­ping into some other inter­est­ing areas of sim­i­lar­ity between tra­di­tional and mod­ern music styles. I seri­ously sug­gest see­ing them if they’re in this neck of the woods again, or else just lis­ten­ing to their Douban.

How­ever, the most inter­est­ing part of their per­for­mance had to be their song that, for all intents and pur­poses, should have been called “Fuck Japan”. I couldn’t catch all the words, but between the Eng­lish for “fuck Japan”, there was def­i­nitely the Chi­nese equiv­a­lent. In the mid­dle of the song, the lead singer broke into speech and, after set­ting it up with “once, back in 2007″, quickly had his mic cut. We didn’t get to hear the polit­i­cal rant, but it was pretty clear what was going on. The thing that struck me most, how­ever, was how into the song the crowd was.

HOUSSE DE RACKET

The first for­eign act of the show, Housse de Rack­ett took the Mod­ern Stage and showed us some of what French rock is doing. It was pretty stan­dard West­ern rock music, only with singing in French. Enjoy­able (seri­ously, Oh Yeah! is a really fun song), but pretty stan­dard. And yes, I know I’m being biased — a lot of Chi­nese bands sound like stan­dard rock music too — but after a fusion Shaanxi folk rock hip-hop band, it’s hard not to hope for a lit­tle creativity.

PERDEL 逃跑计划

I had heard about Perdel a long time ago, as being one of the bands to really look out for in Bei­jing. The reports were not over­stated, and I absolutely fell in love with them. Their style of rock is right up my alley, and the lead singer’s voice sounds like Caleb Fol­low­ill from Kings of Leon. They’re such a fun band, their music is toe-tapping and ener­getic and they did not dis­ap­point. Not only is their sound great, but their per­for­mance was just spot-on. The key­boardist went a lit­tle (read: com­pletely) nuts and dove into the crowd him­self at one point, surf­ing and then just bang­ing around with every­one. Then later on, as their set began to wind down, the rain started; as every­one in the crowd either ran away or put up their umbrel­las, the lead singer headed out from under the shade of the main stage in a show of sol­i­dar­ity for us get­ting rained on.

Def­i­nitely get out to catch them the next time they’re around. Until then, buy their EP or lis­ten to the songs on their Douban over and over again.

CAMERA OBSCURA

I’d never heard Cam­era Obscura before see­ing them at Mod­ern Sky, and I asked my friend who liked them to describe what they sounded like. Need­less to say, it was com­pletely impos­si­ble for her (she kept try­ing to tell me Lykke Li, which I can kind of hear but… but not really). I can’t really do any bet­ter. They remind me a bit of every indie rock band I’ve ever heard, but far bet­ter than any of them. There’s the quirky band mem­bers (one in a kilt), the inex­plic­a­ble brass strains, the upbeat tune cou­pled with depress­ing lyrics — every­thing you’d expect from a cutesy Scot­tish indie band. But they were great fun, per­fectly adorable, and the sort of band fit­ting for 6PM where all you’d like to do is sway around in a grassy field to a boppy tune.

QUEEN SEA BIG SHARK

I wasn’t mar­ried to see­ing them this time around. It was mostly that I wasn’t famil­iar with any of their new stuff, which was a good 80% of what they played (and for me famil­iar­ity makes a huge dif­fer­ence). How­ever, they were still amaz­ing and put on a great show. I’m hop­ing to get more famil­iar with their new stuff before their new album launch show at Yugong Yis­han at the end of this month.