Kevin Bronson on November 15th, 2015

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The dark shadow of the Paris attacks failed to cast a pall over the inaugural Outpost Fest on Saturday, but world events did not go unacknowledged during the seven-band affair in downtown Santa Ana.

Midway through their festival-stealing set, Delta Spirit broke from their earnest exuberance to perform the tender “For My Enemy,” a song from the quintet’s 2014 album, “Into the Wide.” “This one goes out to our friends in Paris,” singer-guitarist Matt Vasquez said, tenderly negotiating the song whose lyrics include: “Don’t you fill your heart with hate / no matter what this world will take / our love must not be disgraced.”

||| Photos by Rayana Chumthong

Indeed, if the communal spirit of live music does offer some semblance of healing, Outpost Fest was the place for it. “It feels like the whole world is falling apart right now,” the Mynabirds’ Laura Burhenn said at the beginning of the afternoon, “but right now we’re all here, together.”

The neighborhood-y feel of the first-year festival contributed to that togetherness. The brainchild of Jon Reiser (formerly of Orange County venues the Detroit Bar and the Observatory) and Delta Spirit bassist Jonathan Jameson, the event was staged in a parking lot in downtown Santa Ana. The lineup was curated by Delta Spirit, who cut their teeth in Southern California before moving to New York, and was headlined by Delta Spirit’s way-back-when tourmates Cold War Kids. New Yorkers Blonde Redhead and Beach Fossils were on the bill, as were Long Beach’s Tijuana Panthers (whose frontman Daniel Michicoff has a side project with Cold War Kids’ Matt Maust and Joe Plummer), Guards (fronted by Anaheim native Richie Follin) and L.A.-based Mynabirds.

“O.C. represent!,” Follin said with a laugh, kicking off Guards’ set. “My grandma is here.”

Outpost, though, was a DIY affair that didn’t look or sound DIY: The stage was of major festival size and production value, and the splashy light show was handled by Jeremy Roth, lighting designer for Wilco. With the half-block area flanked on three sides by three-story buildings, it made for impressive sound quality. The event did suffer a few first-year-festival hiccups: confusion that the box office was a block and a half away from the entrance, occasionally long Port-a-Pottie lines and pricey jumbo bottles of water (the cost was reduced from $5 to $3 to $2 as the evening progressed, though, so somebody was listening).

But a crowd of about 4,000 clearly reveled in the experience, which ended with Cold War Kids’ muscular, rough-edged set, an 18-song affair that touched on all five of their albums and several of their EPs. Tucked in the middle was their big 2015 hit, “First,” and sprinkled throughout their 70-minute performance were four songs — “Hang Me Up to Dry,” “We Used to Vacation,” “Hospital Beds” and concert closer “St. John” — that originally appeared on their “Up in Rags” EP in January 2006. Suffice to say Nathan Willett, bouncing around in subdued light, had a lot of help from the crowd with singing the lyrics.

Delta Spirit rewarded long-timers who saw their old songs back in day as well — including at the end, when Kelly Winrich busted out their trashcan lid to play percussion on 2008’s “Trashcan.” “Haven’t done this in a while,” he allowed. Vasquez dedicated “People Come On” to promoter Reiser, adding, “Rest in peace, Detroit Bar.” The quintet’s hour-long, 14-song set reached its peak near the end, with “Bushwick Blues” and “Into the Wide,” with Vasquez’s cherubic, raspy voice rising above the rootsy racket made by his bandmates.

Earlier, Blonde Redhead gave a typically spine-tingling set of their arty shoegaze, climaxing with “23” to shouts of “More! More!” from the crowd.

Beach Fossils’ solid set had a lighter moment when a fan up front reached over the barrier to hand Dustin Payseur a patch bearing the logo of he band Korn. In October, Payseur tweeted that he was going to a Korn concert for the third time this year. They were preceded by Tijuana Panthers, whose surf-cum-garage rock sounded more muscular than ever.

Guards’ set was comprised of tunes from music from their 2013 album, “In Guards We Trust” — new music is in the works, the band says, but probably not before Follin and mate Kaylie Church (the very pregnant keyboardist/singer) move back to L.A. Church is expecting a child in January.