This is how Friday night ended.

Night No. 2 of the first ever Neon Reverb Downtown Music Festival (of which CityLife is a sponsor) is now a jangly, electro-acoustic memory, collectively imprinted on show-goers by nine bands at three venues. One was the Beauty Bar’s back patio, where the Friday night air was heaven compared to a month ago and the mortar-sized, 24-ounce Pabst cans were a manageable five bucks. In your face, Hard Rock.

Chanteuse Louise LeHir, formerly of neo-psychedelic locals The Pandas, went first with a quick solo set that blended acoustic guitar with lovelorn lyrics (one song sung in French) and long, mesmerizing Cleopatra hair of incomparable sheen. Halloween Town followed, a folk rock ensemble fronted by burly Ryan Pardey, who opened the set with a true story: His car broke down, he had to ride the CAT bus, he overheard a conversation wherein a tweaker construction worker asked his recently widowed friend if he’d ever marry again, to which the friend replied, “I don’t know, right now I guess I just miss my wife.” Unexpected poignancy drenched the Beauty Bar backyard, as Pardey dedicated the first song, “I Guess I Just Miss My Wife,” to that anonymous bus rider.

Halloween Town seemed distracted, but still warm and loose. Once ex-Vegas indie quartet Silver State (they’re in Brooklyn now, hanging with better pigeons) took the stage 40 minutes later, the connection between these two bands became clear. Pardey’s band had been borrowing Silver State bassist Taylor Milne and drummer Alex Stopa. That’s community, dowtown community community lovers. What’s more, in a whole different cosmic intersection, Silver State was the Pavement to Halloween Town’s Silver Jews. State, town, silver, silver–it’s all very confusing, but somewhere, Jews/Pavement alumnus Steve Malkmus must sit smirking at the center.

Silver State’s set was solid, full of new material featuring Stopa’s stoic bashing and lanky singer-guitarist Caleb Lindskoog’s cascading chord descents. Silver State’s set was slow, too. The band sounded good, very good at times, but the outdoor energy slowly drained away, along with half the crowd. One or two up-tempo rockers in the mix would have gone a long way toward captivating an audience that clearly wanted to be taken prisoner.

San Diego act The Silent Comedy closed out the night. A bit harder to describe, this band. Festival promoter James Woodbridge calls them ragtime-meets-rock, which is pretty accurate, although a CityLife team pigeonholing effort yielded the following terrifying chimera: They’re the Fleet Foxes/Interpol/Oak Ridge Boys/ZZ Top/White Stripes/Tom Waits Irish Klezmer Sextet. Lots of good and evil energy there, for sure. One guy in a fin-de-siècle vest, derby hat and handlebar moustache jumped and jerked an electric banjo around like he was covered in stinging ants.

Two nights at Beauty Bar, two San Diego bands charging ahead of the pack. (Synth pop duo QQC rocked BB’s interior Thursday night). Who knows, maybe if a few of our bands go play at a San Diego fest, they’ll be inspired to shake the walls of those venues like a motel full of overstimulated kids on a 5th-grade field trip to Carson City.

There’s much more Neon Reverb to come – click here for the full list of Saturday and Sunday bands, venues and times. Highlights for Saturday include local acts Lips Like Morphine, Yeller Bellies and The Clydesdale, along with Danish rockers Turboweekend. On Sunday, check out Army of the Red Sparrow, Demasiado (from San Diego!), local eccentrics Las Vegas Club and an extra-special secret show by another Vegas band you’ve heard of and enjoy, unless you’ve been living under a rock and enjoying things you shouldn’t. See you there.