My final day of ATP New York didn’t begin until the Caribou Vibration Ensemble performed in the early evening, due to a number of unforeseen factors, one of which involved a lack of gasoline in the car I was driving. The massive incarnation of Dan Snaith’s Caribou project, a 16-member group (among the musicians was Kieran Hebden of Four Tet and John Schmersal of Enon) included four drummers, oodles of guitars, electronics, keyboards, a gong and a five-piece horn section featuring the legendary Marshall Allen, who currently leads the Sun Ra Arkestra. They all unified to convey Caribou’s lushness almost entirely through live instrumentation, transforming Snaith’s manifestations into a huge organic sound more like an experimental jazz group than the electro-noise pop that he’s honed over the years.

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 On the second day of ATP New York, Kutsher's Country Club, even with the overcast skies and some drizzle, lost most of the Shining-esque quality that ATPers staying in the resort (I'm not one of them) so often mention and felt much more like the site of the music-centric sleep-away camp for adults that the festival purports to be, with people lolling about on the grass or in chairs by the lakeside, enjoying whatever dry outdoor moments they could catch. 

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The first day and night of ATP New York, this year curated by Oklahoma's favorite psychedelic noise-pop sons The Flaming Lips, offered a smorgasbord of styles at Kutsher's from instrumental post-rock Australians The Dirty Three and post-punk legends Suicide, to the hushed folk of Iron and Wine, beat-heavy electronics of Panda Bear and thrashy noise of Jesus Lizard.

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Though Destroyer is first and foremost the project of singer-songwriter Dan Bejar (the Vancouverite who also collaborates with The New Pornographers and Swan Lake), he usually tours with a band. But at Bowery Ballroom Thursday night, he went back to his roots, playing solo on acoustic guitar to a crowd of devotees who hung on his every obtuse lyric, relishing every warble and crack of his voice.

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After almost 20 years together, The Clientele has honed shimmery pop psychedelia to a high, practically flawless, polish. Alasdair MacLean’s reverb-bathed breathy vocals buoy each song, his delivery so effortlessly dreamy that 30 minutes or so into the show last night at Music Hall of Williamsburg, it appeared as if the audience (made up mostly of longstanding devotees) was completely hypnotized by the English foursome, which hasn’t performed in the United States since 2007.

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Adam Pierce’s entrancing musical project Mice Parade cross-pollinates the expansiveness of post-rock and ambient electronics with the complexity of jazz, and live, the effect is euphoric.

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These United States released two full-length albums in 2008 (in March, A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden and then in September, Crimes) and has toured relentlessly in support of them for the past year and a half, and persistence has molded this rock band with heavy strains of countrified psychedelia into a well-oiled machine.

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Of Montreal, the flamboyant indie pop band from Athens, Ga., never stops pushing the envelope on its ever-more outlandish costumes and onstage setup. Three giant projection screens displaying swirling animation and other digital wizardry plus manipulated live video of the ornate performers created a banquet of eye candy and a hyper-psychedelic atmosphere at the first of three sold-out shows at Music Hall of Williamsburg.

A circus of red-faced ninjas, pig people and squishy-looking trolls menaced by a tiger-headed man ran amok amidst the five musicians, who were adorned with varying degrees of makeup and costume. Of Montreal’s ebullient frontman and mastermind Kevin Barnes, decked out in skintight black pants, a midriff-baring white shirt and a green bolero coat, served as the ringleader through a seamless set of electronics-heavy hallucinatory pop, the crowd dancing to the pounding beats and hanging on Barnes’s every word. Though the group is touring in support of Skeletal Lamping, Of Montreal’s ninth and most recent record, the audience lost it for classics like “Wraith Pinned To the Mist and Other Games” from 2005’s The Sunlandic Twins. But the crowd was basically ecstatic throughout the almost two-hour set because, after a decade of existence, Of Montreal’s boundlessly energetic creativity has never been more tantalizing to watch.

 Photo courtesy of Lucas Cometto via Flickr.

Camera Obscura has mellowed a bit since its last New York show (at South Street Seaport in 2007). The Glaswegian indie pop band’s performance last night at The Bell House was more subdued and subtle than the three I’d seen after the release of the dazzling Let’s Get Out of This Country in 2006. The 7-member group seemed to spend the first half of the sold-out show building momentum, but hit its stride with the warm organ and effervescent percussion of “French Navy,” a single from the stunning forthcoming album My Maudlin Career (out April 21).

Bandleader Tracyanne Campbell’s mellifluous voice sounded as divine as ever, and with the help of Carey Lander, she captivated the audience with gorgeous harmonies. Campbell possesses the remarkable talent of making lovesickness sound charming, singing lyrics like “you see there are tears in my eyes/ With love for him I despise” (from “Come Back Margaret”) to a bubbly melody, and one of the high points of the night was “The Sweetest Thing,” another new heart-wrenching stunner that begins with sugary oohs and chronicles the struggle to fall out of love.

Though the set focused heavily on My Maudlin Career, it was sprinkled with favorites from Let’s Get Out of This Country, and when “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken” started, the crowd cheered and sang along to every chorus, after which Camera Obscura left the stage, only to return for a two-song encore ending with “Razzle Dazzle Rose,” a bittersweet song about aging, and improvised towards the end for an energetic finish to the night.

Though last night it sounded like the band was still getting comfortable performing the new material, Camera Obscura will be back in June at Webster Hall after touring for more than a month behind the new record, which will likely add fuel to this fresh batch of spectacular songs, and it’ll surely be a show not to be missed.

The Music Tapes’ performance at Bell House was everything you might expect if you know anything about this assemblage of mostly Athens, Ga.-based musicians with Elephant-Six collective lineage: fairly loose, totally high-spirited and absolutely sincere, with a detour midway through. Julian Koster (former drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel) led an eight-member band on banjo and singing saw, with the Seven Foot Tall Metronome and Static the Television in tow, two of the musical props that the earnestly sweet, entirely loveable Koster treated as animate objects throughout the show. His wholehearted belief in magic seemed to fill him with child-like wonder, and he repeatedly said that he would “encourage” the television and his saw to sing, which they did.

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