Pitchfork Music Festival 2011, Saturday: Sun Airway

No one said merging rock and dance music was easy. Especially in 2011, when most of varitions of the hybrid have been exhausted, some successfully, some not so much. For pop act Sun Airway, the challenge is to make the genre elements come together without sounding like a copycat. Today, it manages. The Philly band is more indie than dance with a singer, Jon Barthmus, that recalls, to my ears, everyone from Hamilton Leithauser to Greg Dulli. Dated references, maybe, but I can live with that. Barthmus sings with a one-one-one intimacy on songs like "Your Moon."

Dramatic tunes make use of an echo-splashed hollowbody guitar, Barthmus, Haruki Murakami references and a very dancey rhythm section. Sun Airway make a case that the festival acts that have busy, energetic drummers are usually the ones we come home remembering.