Last night's Noise Pop launch party at Mezzanine was packed.  And...a bit of a letdown.  San Francisco's own Lilofee opened, and while seductive singer Kimi Recor had serious stage presence, the performance was a bit reminiscent of No Doubt circa when Gwen Stefani decided to start partying with the Harajuku girls instead of playing real music.  Recor took off her tights during the show and proceeded to fling them into the crowd, stripper style.  Right.

Round two featured the highly acclaimed and highly anticipated Deerhunter (Microcastle was one of the best albums of 2008). We got the fortunate front-row view of Josh Fauver, the bassist. The entire set was supposed to be one cohesive 90-minute song, but with Bradford Cox's vocals on low (was this on purpose? it's unclear), all we could hear were the blaring synths on repeat (and all we could focus on was his blue fleece). Not ideal. The fog machine was set to super-high and even standing in the very front row, we never even caught a glipse of Moses Archuleta, the drummer - he was completely lost in the smoke. The band relied heavily on the fog machine and super epileptic-seizure-inducing lighting to create an effect that in the end, just fell flat against a muddy performance.

We can't say that we were completely disappointed, but we will say that we're looking forward to Stephen Malkmus tonight in hopes of a more clear, focused interpretable show. See you tonight.