noirFest IV, Thursday Through Saturday Nights

Tonight kicks off the fourth fall festival hosted by the New Orleans Indie Rock Collective: noirFest IV, featuring all local indie bands. A true testament to both the vibrancy of the current indie scene and to the vast broadness of the label “indie rock” in 2010, it promises to be a varied weekend with each of the acts on the lineup bringing a unique sound very different from the others on the bill, and each night taking place at a different venue.

Individual night passes are available at the door of each show for $7, or you can purchase a weekend pass for just $11. Firefly Vodka will be running a special of $2 Sweet Teas all weekend, and all entrants will receive a free copy of the Indie Rock Collective’s Four the Birds sampler CD, featuring tracks from the cream of the New Orleans indie crop.

The fest begins tonight at the Saturn Bar with lo-fi booty-beat lounge act Jean-Eric and sunny electro-pop rockers Royal Teeth.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj5pXfI140Q[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d7I2H4Mvg0[/youtube]

Friday night is upstairs at the Blue Nile, and features more rock/indie-pop from local buzz band Sun Hotel, subtle country-western-tinged rock from Vox and the Hound, and all instrumentals from Smiley With a Knife.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1SwhP1zBA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjpq-FUe5N0[/youtube]

The festival closes on Saturday with a night of supergroups at One Eyed Jacks. Along with psych-washed outfit King Rey, two of New Orleans’ newer indie groups, Empress Hotel and Big History, will also perform, although both groups feature resumes stuffed several pages long of credits with various local bands, several shared. Empress Hotel can list credits from MyNameIsJohnMichael, Vox and the Hound, Silent Cinema, Antenna Inn, and more, and Big History shares the lineage of Silent Cinema, Antenna Inn and MyNameIsJohnMichael while adding One Man Machine and Meg Roussel to the employment history.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYI7s9JCCEM[/youtube]