Parquet Courts, Reigning Sound, and more at Village Voice 4Knots (PHOTOS & REVIEW)

By the time I arrived at South Street Seaport for this year's installment of the Village Voice's 4Knots Festival, my shirt was already showing damp patches and beads of sweat were racing each other down my face. The air was still and lacking the familiar breeze from the East River that the seaport is usually graced with. Still, there was a festival to be had, and while the day may have been hot, the bands were hotter. 

This year's 4Knots was a marked change of style from last years easy-going pop-heavy line up that included The Drums, Hospitality, and Nick Waterhouse. Gritty, dirty guitars and an overall unkempt sound was the highlight of this year's acts. Brooklyn based Parquet Courts who are touring in support of their 2012 release "Light Up Gold", stole the show. They brought their anthems of confusion, lack of direction and good ol Ridgewood, Queens wandering to the stage at the seaport where they delivered a dense, energetic set. The anti-establishment tinged "Master of my Craft" kicked off a small mosh and provided the perfect moment of irony. The satire of business interests praising the dollar played at the Village Voice's huge event, a weekly, whose parent company since last year Voice Media Group recently cleared the paper of its beloved writers to 'rebrand'. The end of Parquet Courts set featured front man Andrew Savage going off on a rant, which kept with the anti-conformist themes. All that could really be mustered over the cacophony of guitars was the last repeated line "sun bathing animal". Despite the apparent insult to all of us sun bathing animals soaking up tunes and rays, Parquet Courts seriously killed it.

Reigning Sound's set was almost ruined for me by a severely intoxicated 50-something year old woman, but was saved by their head-bopping jams and was a good way to cool down from the constant assault of power chords and angst. Bringing their glossed over, dance worthy, heavy jams all the way from Memphis, Reigning Sound had everyone, including the aforementioned drunk lady, grooving heavy. Frontman and well-respected musician Greg Cartwright crooned over melancholy songs of lost and broken love. The drunkard said we were all scared to love. Nonetheless, Reigning Sound really reigned in the day, and set the stage for what I'm assuming was a good Kurt Vile set (left early :P) 

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