One day of Capitol Hill Block Party down, one more to go. Here's what happened yesterday:

Flexions played the Vera stage at 5pm, the sun still up and sizzling, and at first it seemed to me that the duo simply shouldn't ever play in sunlight. Something about their shredded dub rhythms just seemed too dark and disorderly for the daytime. I'd never heard the duo use vocals before, possibly because I've been seeing them play on shitty PAs so far, and it definitely changed the dimensions of their songs, adding a more markedly punk/post-punk layer to their choruses (I was hearing Wire or even the Buzzcocks in some of the unison vocals; a friend heard early New Order). As their set went on though, the band relaxed into a couple more loping, sunny songs, marked by more bright, floating guitar echoes, and then it started making some sense in the sunshine (one song straight up sounded like a dub version of "Lola").

Bow + Arrow's set yesterday was essentially the band's last, and for the occasion they added a second drummer, re-arranged a bunch of their excellent old material, and left room for some new, improvisational jams. Only, you couldn't really feel the extra drumming most of the time, the re-arrangements didn't seem that radical (there was big talk of "psychedelia" that wasn't quite realized onstage), and the improvisation didn't seem to go far beyond jamming out the ends of some of their old songs (and this was where you could really hear the expanded rhythm section). So, maybe not the blazing set I would have liked to see the band go out on, but it was still fine. The band's songs, despite the extra drummer, despite aims for psych or prog or whatever, are really just fantastic revivifications of old-school emo-core, and that's well enough for me. They played a new song, "Ark" (?), which Lucas Thillman introduced by saying, "If you've ever seen Trekkies, you know what that means" (I have, though it's been a while, and I don't know what it means). They closed with a cover of OMD's "Genetic Engineering" (off Dazzleships, the band's best record). "This is a cover of an OMD song," Thillman announced. "If you can figure out which...No, it's not "If You Leave," which is a good song but compared to the rest of OMD's catalogue is kind of BS." (Actually, that would have been an awesome song to go out on.) After the set, they apologized for being a jam band.

I only caught bits and pieces of Black Lips, but they were the first band on the Main Stage all day to sound really fucking good (that new Distillers band was awful). It's all well covered by now, but to repeat: Black Lip's stew of psych garage and girl group pop is pretty hard not to love. And "O, Katrina" remains an unfadeable jam.

I wasn't expecting much from Micachu & the Shapes. Honestly, I listened to Jewellry once and found it not so striking, certainly not as amazing as some of my friends and colleagues, people whose musical tastes I hold in high regard, made it out to be. And at first, approaching the stage, I thought the band's set was just going to confirm my antipathy. It sounded like droney, half-formed art school shenanigans (and I like art school shenanigans) with just a hint of r&b buried alive underneath. (At this point, I over heard two guys in the crowd: "Are you familiar with Pitchfork?" "No, but everybody's always telling me about it.") But then they played a song that was just all rimshot click, bass groove, and digital ringing percussion, and it sounded great—drone as pop, the r&b clawing its way up to the surface of the song (something about "old debris" maybe?). The song ended in an epic thrash, and then there was another groovey number that spiked into noise at the end. There was one song ("Hardcore"?) where Mica Levi and one of her bandmates stood facing each other across the mic, strumming guitars close to each other, strings and faces nearly touching. Walking across the grounds, someone seemed to be reading "poetry" on the Main Stage.

I've grown to really like Deerhunter, especially live, where their combination of antagonistic noise and dream pop really combusts, but man, they owe such a huge debt to Sonic Youth (og combusters of dream pop and noise) that it must be almost awkward to share a festival bill with the band. Still, Deerhunter are excellent on their own. Insistently groovy Microcastle jam "It Never Stops" is all eddies and undertow, warm drowning music. "Cover Me (Slowly)" is just epically woozy; Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox introduced it as the band's "Cortez the Killer."

Speaking of which...Holy shit, how do I forget in between every time I see them that Built to Spill are pretty much perfect live. They're not much to look at, but that just means you can let yourself wander freely and enjoy them from wherever. The setlist picked out for the band by fan vote was also pretty ideal. "You Were Right" is scathing and skyscraping (and bong-scraping and ultimately hopeful). It started raining just a little, pleasant and warm, during "Big Dipper," with all its kid-sized wonder. "Virginia Reel Around the Fountain" sounded fantastic, even without Calvin's parts (Jeff, this is as close as you may ever get to seeing the Halo Benders at Block Party). Even songs that I don't care for so much on record—"Going Against Your Mind," "Carry the Zero"—are totally compelling live. And, god damn, it was great to see the band play "Car." (I missed/blacked out "Cortez" if they played it.)

They Live! just fucking killed shit headlining the Neumos stage. MCs Dro Boy and Bruce Illest (aka Gatsby and BlesOne) are plenty entertaining on their own—genial, cartoonishly animated, and totally on top of their games—but their back-up breakdancer, Chase, as well as his accomplice, damn near steal the show. Whether twitchily stalking the stage like a meth-head on the song of the same name or pulling a lucky lady onstage for a recreation of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" video (complete with the Boss' awesome Carlton-esque dance move), Chase is the act's not-at-all-secret weapon. They did new song "Whitney" and old favorite "Weed Murderer." They ended the set by pumping Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," rocking out a la Wayne's World, before cutting the song up into a beat for one last jam, pulling the crowd up on stage to get down. Also, congrats are in order to Larry Mizell Jr (aka Dro Boy, Gatsby), who starting this Sunday evening is taking over KEXP's long-running Street Sounds show. Cheers, Lar.

Caught the last two songs of Mika Miko and enjoyed what felt like a pretty fucking friendly mosh pit (or I may have just been still feeling good vibes from They Live!). Wound up at the Cha Cha (gasp!), where the objective awesomeness of the new Phoenix album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, especially "Lisztomania" and "1901," played over the bar's soundsystem inspired the best dancing I'll probably see all weekend.

photo, top, of crowd at Mika Miko by Kelly O. Built to Spill by Curt Doughty.