It wasn’t that long ago that summer music festivals didn’t really exist in America. I can remember pouring over Melody Maker’s coverage of events like the Reading Music Festival and longing to attend something similar. It wouldn’t be for a couple more decades that the concept of multi-day, multi-stage affairs with numerous bands took hold in America, and of course by then, the idea of being trapped in a throng Modest Mouse fans no longer appealed to me.

Thankfully, though, there are still events like the Northside Festival which seem to have found the perfect balance of big shows and small names in clubs. With 2014 marking its sixth year, the festival has expanded to included film and digital realm programming, but music still remains at its heart. And while large shows in McCarren Park by Thee Oh Sees and Chvrches brought out the hipster masses from the surrounding neighborhoods, the Northside Fest specializes in curated club gigs.

The first for me was Thursday night at the Cameo Gallery. A deliquent G train meant that it took longer than expected for me to get there, and by that time Cleveland’s Herzog (pictured above), the main attraction for your Ohio-born author, was halfway into their set. Still, it was worth the hustle to get there. The band tore through songs like “Mad Men” from its stellar new album, Boys, and ran through a cover of “Not Proud of the USA” by Cleveland legends The Mice. I would have liked to have heard another half dozen or so from the band, but as it was, their set whetted my appetite to see them again in the near future. Las Rosas followed, and though their vaguely psychedelic tunes were catchy enough, it was kind of hard to get past the affectations inherent in vocalist Jose Boyer’s singing. Once one was acclimated to his hiccupy voice, however, their garage pop held a good deal of appeal, as evidenced by the kids doing the hippie dippy dancing down front.

Friday night, the trains were running on schedule, which meant I got to Baby’s All Right in plenty of time to catch Operators, the new band fronted by Dan Boeckner (formerly of Handsome Furs and Wolf Parade and pictured right) and including his Divine Fits bandmate Sam Brown on drums and the singularly named Devojka on keys and various other sound manipulators. Boeckner switched between keys and guitars (or both simultaneously) while handling vocals, and though one could hear similarities between his contributions to Divine Fits, as well as his other projects, Operators seems to be as much concerned with electronic textures and ambiance as it does melody and the like. Boeckner explained that this was only the band’s fifth show, but aside from some false starts and a couple cuts that seemed to still be works in progress, the trio’s dozen or so electro-pop songs were impressive. The packed house seemed impressed too, cheering after the group left the stage until they returned for an encore.

On Saturday, an early afternoon showing of the original Godzilla movie (unaffiliated with Northside) at The Museum of the Moving Image meant that I got to McCarren Park just in time to catch Thee Oh Sees. This was the first time I had seen the band in a setting so large. Lead Oh See John Dwyer and his newly assembled line-up seemed comfortable on the large stage, though, even if the band’s terse garage nuggets weren’t transcendent enough to reach the park’s furthest corners. But it was a beautiful day and it was hard to not to have a positive reaction—which in the audience seemed to vary between head nodding and crowd surfing. Thee Oh Sees are still better suited to a small club, but there was really nothing to complain about this afternoon.

After a pitstop at Jameson’s annual Northside shindig, I made it to Warsaw, where I quickly decided that pierogies and kielbasa held more allure than the white guy onstage rapping, MC Breath. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, the Australian septet who took the prize not only for best name, but the band that seemed to be everywhere this year, were on next, and the big group made a big sound, blending notes and a dual-drummer attack into a swirl of psychedelia that actually was more appealing than even their moniker might let on. But of course, most people in the admittedly non-capacity audience were there for the Dead Milkmen and their repertoire of humorous punk nuggets. The setlist was well-stacked with highlights from throughout the band’s now 30-year career, but it was the classics—“Right Wing Pigeons,” “Serrated Edge,” “Beach Party Vietnam”—that got the crowd going. Some were perhaps a little too wound up as lead Milkman Rodney Linderman (pictured above) had to make a point of asking the moshers not to get onstage and possibly damage his equipment. He also ended up jumping into the crowd at one point to break up a fight, but such interruptions aside, the band’s set was a proportional mix of manic energy and nostalgia. It turned out to be the last Northside show for me—that is, until next year.