Kevin Bronson on October 5th, 2008

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As darkness fell (and, as you’ll see, my photographic capabilities diminished), I looked in on Shiny Toy Guns, the L.A.-based electro-rock act whose sophomore album, “Season of Poison,” is coming out in November. There’s a lot of smoke-and-mirrors in STG’s radio-friendly rock, and even more bluster. At times I’ve thought there isn’t a single song Jeremy Dawson and crew couldn’t bludgeon into submission, but I had a weak spot for “Le Disko” when the band was exploding off the Sunset Strip a few years ago, and their incredibly hard touring has won them a coast-to-coast following. On Saturday night, the band’s synths were on HGH, with Dawson furiously working his banked keyboards to create a sound that carried a full city block.

Is Gogol Bordello a festival headliner? They sure played like one — a frantic two hours of stylistic stew incorporating funk, punk and world flavors. Fiddler Sergey Ryabtsev seemed to set off the crowd the most, but high-flying frontman Eugene Hutz was downright explosive. With the percussionist-dancers staging all kinds of surprises, there is now question the cult of gypsy punks lives, and is growing. Very few fans departed Gogol’s stage during the hour that I watched.

Cut Copy ushered in their newer order about 20 minutes late, and their just-under-an-hour set seemed way too short. If Shiny Toy Guns beat the beat out of you, this winsome Australian quartet coaxes it, with just the right amount of electronics, bass and drums propelling their picture-perfect pop songs. Yeah, my stiff legs even pogoed a little. Everybody else was pogoing a lot — was it my imagination, or was the pavement shaking? The Australians’ light show was good, too (reminding me at times of Love and Rockets’ set-up last spring at Coachella). “Lights & Music” ought to end up on everybody’s year-end mixtape. Dance on.

I didn’t get very close to the Mars Volta’s stage, at least not enough to get a decent photo. The prog-rockers were at their eardrum-pounding best, but a lot of the faithful had headed for the exits by the halfway point in their two-hour set. With its complex arrangements and virtuoso musicianship, TMV is a band you hold in awe, even if you don’t emotionally connect with their songs, and that’s where I stand. I did note, interestingly, that the Virgin kiosk that was selling CDs (yes, imagine that, physical copies) had the entire At the Drive-In catalog on its shelves interspersed with the Mars Volta’s. At about 11, I gave in to hunger and the promise of $1 Kobe beef tacos at a nearby eatery.

Postscripts: The DJ Stage, in a courtyard at the top of the City Hall steps, was a cool idea. They had a nice mini-dance party going on in there, especially between the sets by Cut Copy and the Presets (whom I missed). The Event Card System, though, I was not so fond of. Rather than having vendors handle cash, organizers issued credit card-like Event Cards at booths around the festival. Besides occasionally losing track of your balance after one or two electronic transactions, you had to fight lines to buy more credit on your card. And, at the end of the night, you had to fight lines to get your balance back in cash. If Goldenvoice does this at Coachella, it could mean hassles.