Summer in New York City means that the sun can turn the Big Cinderblock into one big sweat lodge, but Coney Island is and always has been something of a seaside oasis. In it’s ninth year, the Siren Festival has given New Yorkers another reason to hit the boardwalk – a free day of music held on two streets between the subway station and the beach. You can swim in the ocean, play on the beach, eat Nathan’s hotdogs, and drink in any one of the boardwalk dives. And for the young or young at heart, there’s carnival games and rides. The question is: What better place to see live music outside? The price is certainly right.

The festival, whose lead sponsor is the Village Voice, bucks the trend of trying to be a music festival that is all things to all people, instead diving headlong into guitar-driven indie rock. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks and Broken Social Scene anchored this year’s lineup. Other highlights include local darlings Dragons Of Zynth and Montreal’s Islands, while Beach House seemed rather too relaxed for the frenetic surroundings. To be fair, some of the afternoon’s sets might have been better if the P.A. system sounded better – lyrics were often indecipherable, overall sound was muddy, and drums sounds seemed limited to kick-drum thunks and washes of cymbals. Maybe because of their (or their soundman’s) familiarity with bigger stages, the headliners seemed to fare best.

Stephen Malkmus’s songwriter isn’t known for its clarity anyway, so weird verses and goofy sing-along choruses seem to work fine when performed next to the famed Cyclone rollercoaster. Dressed like a caddy just off a loop at a nearby Long Island golf course, Malkmus lurched around stage with that boyish charm that counters the weirdness of the music. He was supported by new drummer Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Quasi), who almost broke through the sonic muck while bassist Joanna Bolme and guitarist-keyboardist Mike Clarke did not. The band closed down the festival with a straight version of the Eddie Money FM radio staple “Two Tickets To Paradise” that was as fun as it was unexpected.

Broken Social Scene had its usual menegarie of people onstage, which included several guitarists and a horn section. Missing a woman from this lineup, the ad hoc group improvised by tossing a new friend of the female persuasion onstage to handle vocal chores on one song. The set itself was uplifting, cathartic, celebratory and funny.

The polite group from Toronto seemed genuinely excited to play on Coney Island and sent those vibes out into the audience, even wishing good thoughts to someone being taken away in an ambulance during the set. Like many others on the bill past and present, the band did bitch about how condos were taking over this slice of Americana. But even then, no one seemed to mind because the band’s good-time vibe was still such that no amount of gentrification is going to put a black mark on this day of sticky rock and roll fun.

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