Noise Pop festival celebrates various forms of art

By Lauren Duffy

Indie music lovers rejoiced at Noise Pop 2011, a six-day festival that celebrated the best of independent music, art, and film from Feb. 22 to 27.

Now in its nineteenth year, this year's festival featured Yo La Tengo, Best Coast, Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), No Age, and Ted Leo among dozens of burgeoning artists on the eclectic lineup. Beyond concerts, Noise Pop includes art exhibits, film series, culture clubs, and happy hours spread across eighteen venues in San Francisco and Oakland.

Noise Pop is an opportunity for up-and-coming musicians to showcase their talents for a wider audience. Past artists include The Flaming Lips, Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse, the Donnas, White Stripes, and Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco). The festival is also known for featuring obscure, underground rock legends, such as Bob Mould, Lou Barlow, Sleater-Kinney, and Frank Black (of the Pixies).  

Noise Pop is frequently compared to a San Francisco version of South By Southwest (SXSW), the annual ten-day interactive tech-music fest in Austin, Texas.

On Feb. 23, Noise Pop featured the world premiere of "This Is Noise Pop" at The Roxie Theater in the Mission District. "This Is Noise Pop" traced the festival's growth from its humble inaugural beginnings as a one-day event in 1993, and explored the history of independent rock in a pre- and post-digital era.

Director Adam Werbach, writer/producer Tony Saxe, and Noise Pop founders Kevin Arnold and Jordan Kurland answered questions after the film premiere to a packed house at the sold-out show. Werbach explained that filming for the documentary began in 1999, and the movie-house was filled with numerous contributors to the documentary and to the festival itself.

This is Noise Pop consisted of archival, handheld performance footage dating from the festival's inception, which made it feel almost as if it was a live concert. The loose thesis of this grainy, underground documentary centered on the question of defining what exactly "indie rock" is. Even the musicians interviewed in the film, including members of Death Cab for Cutie, The National, and The Shins, struggled to define the ambiguous "indie rock" label. During the Q & A, one film goer brought up the lack of female artists showcased in the documentary; with the exception of a brief interview with the lead singer of The Donnas and footage of elfin Joanna Newsom's harp performance, there were no female musicians featured.

Another film highlight of Noise Pop was "Look at What The Light Did Now," a documentary about Canadian musician Feist. The film centered on the creation of her breakthrough 2007 release "The Reminder." The Feb. 24 screening at the Viz Theater was accompanied by a pre-show acoustic performance from Little Wings, a folk musician featured in the documentary, and a post-show discussion with album artist Simone Rubi.

The reflexive documentary showcased the media blitz that followed and showed an intimate portrayal of Feist's discomfort with celebrity. The reclusive indie star found herself become a household name with the success of "1234," which hit 8 on the Billboard Charts after being featured on an iPad commercial.

"Look at What the Light Did Now" illustrated the dreamy aesthetic vision behind her North American tour, an art project of a concert intended by Feist as "to make visible what is audible."

Feist is currently recording her follow-up to "The Reminder" in a big old barn in Big Sur, said Rubi after the screening.  

Beyond films, Noise Pop featured twenty-seven shows that ranged from mellow rock, like Alexi Murdoch and Death Cab's Ben Gibbard, to the lo-fi stylings of surf-rock pop group Best Coast and punk-y Wavves. Fans were treated to an exuberant electronic dance-fest by legendary trip-hop DJ Kid Koala, who spun vinyl on four turntables, ranging from funk, house, and classic rock to "Yo Gabba Gabba" samples that instructed the audience how to dance.

Indie rock legends, including Swedish group The Concretes and long-running trio Yo La Tengo, steeped the festival in historical significance. This year's roster included Culture Clubs, talks from artists including Kid Koala, No Age, and Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

Zinner's photographic exhibit 1001 Images premiered at the festival, an exhibit that encapsulated the feeling of Noise Pop, as a communal musical and aesthetic experience of all things independent.

Contact Lauren Duffy at leduffy@scu.edu or at (408) 554-1918.