It was the fourth and final day of the Mission Creek Music Festival in Iowa City, and there was a lot to see. Just between the Yacht Club and the Picador, three shows spanned the course of about eight hours. At first, this seemed quite a feasible day to cover. Little did I realize this would come to be quite a problem as the night grew older. First was a no-brainer – an early show at the Picador that we were worried would be catastrophically derailed by a mid-afternoon wrath from above that included severe wind, thunderous downpouring of rain and hail, and a serious tornado warning. Nonetheless, and despite Arbouretum calling to say they’d be late, the show began with a brief solo performance from local songwriter Caleb Engstrom, who took the stage for about 15 minutes to play some short tunes on his guitar and sing and whistle. Having the misfortune of opening a 5:30 show meant he only played to a few, but those there enjoyed the frank simplicity of his performance. He gave way to David Karsten Daniels, who performed a rapturous set as a four-piece band that included most of the songs from his recently released Sharp Teeth as well as an older song from Angles and a new song, which he told me would likely be on the next record. His performance of “Beast” was unbeatable and probably the finest single song of the week, mixing the sparseness of his folk sensibility with a giant climax on the repeated line “You’re gonna have to look the beast in the face…” Throughout their set, music gave way to chills and the sense that we were witnessing something very intimate. It was undoubtedly one of the finest sets of the four-day festival.

Daniels was followed by Chicago’s Bound Stems, a band we’d been looking forward to since the minute we heard last year’s Appreciation Night, and they didn’t disappoint, infusing an otherwise folky afternoon with some much needed indie rock freneticism. A highlight for all of us was when in the middle of their set they launched into “Excellent News, Colonel,” a cathartic break-up duet of a song that features multi-instrumentalist Janie Porche lamenting apologetically “I’ve fallen for someone in New York” before lead man Bobby Gallivan desperately grasps at trying to keep something together. Unfortunately, I had to miss part of their set to help Arbouretum find their way to the venue, but I was able to make it back in time for their raucous closer, “Risking Life and Limb For the Coupon.”

The extended time that Arbouretum needed for a set up and soundcheck meant that it seemed like an opportune time to run over to another venue to make sure that everything was running smoothly, but unfortunately it wound up causing me to miss the beginning of their set. It didn’t matter though, as I made it back just as the gritty “Pale Rider Blues” was beginning to chug away. As probably the best tune from their recently released Rites of Uncovering it was certainly one of the most impressive tunes they played, but they also meandered through a mix of cuts from the new album and their older work, jamming out with tremendous volume and a seemingly distant focus. Though their set closer “The Rise” was initially disappointing as the eerie background vocals of “Ohhh, the rise” didn’t come through in the live setting, the band more than made up for it with several minutes of extended noise at the end that concluded with lead man Dave Heumann, from his knees with his back to a perplexed audience, turning his head and grinning as if to say to us, “Okay, that’s it. We’re done now.” It was a bizarre ending to a strange afternoon that wound up going off without a hitch despite some uncontrollable circumstances.

Everything was running a little late due to Arbouretum’s trouble with the weather, but we still had two more shows to witness on this now pleasant Saturday evening: a late Picador show headlined by Canada’s Rock Plaza Central, and concurrently a show at the Yacht Club made of primarily local bands but concluding with the spectacle that is Chicago’s Mucca Pazza, a self-described “astounding punk circus marching band.” Following Arbouretum we hit the bar at the Picador while the curiously named Brighton, MA set up and soundchecked. Brighton are a Chicago quintet whose name pays tribute to lead singer Matt Kerstein’s town of birth. The band drew a considerable crowd for being the opener of a show competing with local favorites over at the Yacht Club, but those in attendance who hadn’t heard the band before (myself included) were left with nothing to do but dance and smile at the honest, energetic indie rock in the Springsteen/Roger Clyne vein.

As it turned out, most of the crowd had assembled to see the homecoming of sorts for Ames, Iowa’s Envy Corps, who had just finished recording their forthcoming debut record on the UK’s Vertigo Records, the overseas home of bands such as the Rapture and the Killers. The Envy Corps rocked the biggest crowd the Picador saw all weekend with raucous tunes that bore subtle U2 influences, showing them as an accomplished band with a sound that could fill much larger venues. However, seeing them in their home state, it’s obvious that the Envy Corps see themselves as nothing more than just a band from Iowa who happened to get signed, and their fans, many of whom sang along to every word, certainly aren’t begrudging them at all.

Now came the giant dilemma of the night. Whither to go as the night wore on? I wasn’t going to allow myself to miss the entire night at a Yacht Club that I was told was packed to the gills at this point, but I wanted to catch Iowa City’s Death Ships in their first hometown show since trekking down to South By Southwest, and I certainly wasn’t going to miss Rock Plaza Central, the final band of the entire festival. My decision was made – I was to stay for the first few songs of Death Ships’ set, knowing I could see them again sooner than later, then book over to the Yacht Club to take in the marching band before coming back in time to catch the last half of RPC.

Death Ships hit the stage clearly ecstatic to be following Envy Corps and playing to their fans and friends. Their music sounds far more alive in concert than on record, and I was happy to catch them play cuts such as “Symmetrical Smiles” from their first record Seeds of Devastation, but after three or four songs I had to make my way elsewhere. On any other night I would have been glad to stay and take in their indie-folk Americana, but duty calls and I decided to make a run over to the Yacht Club – the beauty of this festival in downtown Iowa City is that all the participating venues are within walking distance. The Yacht Club was indeed mobbed, and the low ceiling and high volume of people meant that I could only barely make out the members of Mucca Pazza on the stage. For the benefit of all of us, certain members of the band, such as a drum corps here or a horn section there randomly marched out into the crowd to make sure that the entire audience was significantly reached. I never did get close enough to the stage to see what the entire band looked like in action, but one can imagine 28 members of a marching band in full regalia rocking out in a packed club. Mucca Pazza fed off the energy of the attendees and wowed us with a set mixed with originals and covers that surprised me for how closely they worked with eastern European and Middle Eastern tonalities. The band is completely devoid of indie rock pretensions but adheres to a modern take on traditional music with an exuberance that suggests that they truly are doing this because of their interest in and devotion to it. They embrace the nerdery that inherently exists in playing in a marching band while simultaneously moving normally callous hipsters to bouts of spontaneous dancing.