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Radio 104.5 Block Party: MisterWives and company help bring in the summer

Radio 104.5 FM threw a summer block party three weeks before the official start of the season on Sunday at Festival Pier. It had all the makings of a good street fair. It was free (station fans had to register for tickets). There were cold brews, grilled food, party games like beer pong, and teens lying around in shorts. And there were cool kid-indie bands as the long afternoon's sound track.

Radio 104.5 FM threw a summer block party three weeks before the official start of the season on Sunday at Festival Pier. It had all the makings of a good street fair. It was free (station fans had to register for tickets). There were cold brews, grilled food, party games like beer pong, and teens lying around in shorts. And there were cool kid-indie bands as the long afternoon's sound track.

The Oxford, England, alt-rock unit A Silent Film was the headliner - a good, not entirely contagious act. Entering to the sound of swarming bees, military drum riffs, and the splintered synths of "Tomorrow," A Silent Film was reminiscent of Psychedelic Furs toward the end of the '80s - a spooky but overly slick brand of sinister new wave. Shades-wearing singer Robert Stevenson and company did a solid job hawking midtempo mood-punk with a warbling, sad-guy edge and wounded soul lyricism on the soaring "Paralyzed" and the curt "You Will Leave a Mark." But hours in the sun drinking Fireball might have had the crowd tuckered out.

The Copenhagen/Brooklyn power-popping New Politics came on awkwardly with sweeping grandeur ("Tonight You're Perfect") and tossed lamely rendered covers (the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," a silly metal Lil Jon/Nirvana medley) into its mix. When sticking to sleek, cranky dance-rock with rapped/crooned vocals eerily reminiscent of Falco, however, singer David Boyd and his buoyant band did a nice job. One of the ideals of block party music is staying high-energy, and New Politics did so with the angular "Everywhere I Go (Kings & Queens)," the tart new rager "West End Kids," and the ardently anthemic "A Bad Girl in Harlem." Boyd was a genuinely athletic front man who did one mean somersault off his drum kit.

New York City's MisterWives truly had the best, standout set, and at the perfect time of day - 4 p.m. Unlike the dance-pop-meets-nuanced-folk of their debut album, Our Own House, pigtailed singer Mandy Lee and the Wives headed for giddy, quirky, horn-infused tunes such as "Hurricane" and the discoid "Reflections." They sequenced tempos and arrangements seamlessly, with weird trumpets, icy male harmonies, and Lee's yelping vocals into one sweet, frothy whole. And they were entertaining in an old-school fashion, with extended vamps and false endings - something that should make them worth seeing again, when they play the Fillmore Philadelphia in November.