NXNE gets better,North by Northeast took another step closer to becoming the festival Toronto music fans have always wanted it to be this year.

North by Northeast took another step closer to becoming the festival Toronto music fans have always wanted it to be this year.

The five-day rock ’n’ roll bender really felt like an event the city at large had gotten into last week, what with four bustling shows at Yonge-Dundas Square, and a proliferation of South by Southwest-esque day parties and barbecues on the side that generally made the proceedings seem, well, more festive. We need more of that action. We need music all day, every day, when the weather’s this nice so people can really get excited about the festival grind.

Granted, the downtown streets were pretty much at capacity this weekend due to the convergence of NXNE, Luminato, a tattoo convention and the Taste of Little Italy festival on the same dates. With College St. closed and Dundas and King both snafu’d with construction, you really weren’t getting anywhere fast unless you were walking or biking. That meant confining your evening’s travels to a manageable geographic radius and sacrificing some favourites (sorry, Chad VanGaalen) for the greater good. And even then, you had to brace for occasional disappointment; a lot of places simply filled up before you got there, meaning no-gos for this writer on numerous occasions, most disappointingly Die Mannequin and Dearly Beloved at Cherry Cola’s on Wednesday and Braids at the Garrison on Friday.

Plenty of good to outweigh the bad, though. Here’s a sampling.

Crocodiles, Silver Dollar, Thursday and Saturday: The festival’s big “get” this year was snaring the first three Canadian dates ever by San Diego noise-rock duo-turned-quintet Crocodiles, and they really did rise to the occasion. Thursday night’s set was swaggering enough, but by Saturday’s 1 a.m. swan song the band had properly sussed out the Silver Dollar’s sound system and generated enough buzz over the previous days to slam the room dangerously full of excited onlookers. A revved-up, blisteringly loud and noticeably more cocksure throwdown ensued and I’m betting a lot of copies of last year’s Sleep Forever were sold in Toronto on Sunday afternoon. Which is a good thing because it’s time people woke up to one of last year’s best-but-neglected albums. Very glad they lived up to the hype I built up in my own head.

HotKid, Reposado, Saturday: Nice to discover something awesome you’d overlooked in your own backyard. Even nicer to stroll down Ossington Ave. on a Saturday afternoon and hear scorching punk rock blaring from the window of a disused former laundromat recently annexed by the bar Reposado and hijacked this NXNE by the Last Gang crew for a fun day party that also featured a much improved Modern Superstitions, Chains of Love and the Two Koreas operating at the peak of their powers. The highlight was Cambridge, Ont.-born HotKid, though, a guitar/drums duo that occasionally sounds like the White Stripes as fronted by Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker, albeit with a much, much more competent drummer. Shiloh Harrison and Rob Butcher III are onto something here. Can’t believe I’d missed ’em before. No more.

The Luyas, Horseshoe Tavern, Thursday: One of Canada’s most original and enchanting live acts, Montreal’s Luyas require that you fully immerse yourself in their arty, elusive music to properly get it. Once you throw yourself headlong into “Luyaspace,” however, strange and beautiful things start happening and you realize there were songs to sing along with all along. Jessie Stein remains a most likeable frontwoman and the new homemade light show was a nice bonus. Love the Luyas, please.

Jon McKiel, Velvet Underground, Saturday: The muddy Velvet sound mix didn’t do Halifax’s McKiel and his band — a talented ensemble that included standup bass, violin and female harmony vocals — any favours in a roomful of people who mostly had no idea who Jon McKiel was, nor did the unrelentingly grim and plodding mood of the material culled from the singer/songwriter’s recent, excellent Confidence Lodge EP. Those who tuned in above the chatter, however, got a taste of the compellingly dark and mysterious material that has scattered observers touting McKiel as one of the country’s rising stars. And there’s no denying the weightless pop brilliance of “Motion Pictures.” None at all.

Catl, Silver Dollar, Saturday: One of the city’s favourite bar bands got even rowdier, rougher and raunchier than usual — at the relatively early/sober hour of 9 p.m., no less — for its slot at the top of a mini-NXNE blues festival at the Dollar on Saturday evening. This threesome always kinda blows me away, but that night they really blew me away. The new album they’re working on with Detroit garage-rock legend Jim Diamond is gonna be hot, hot, hot. Still one of my favourite bands.

F---ed Up, Yonge-Dundas Square, Thursday: Because even though it was a huge outdoor gig, frontman Damian Abraham treated it like a regular, all-ages hardcore gig and simply got out there on the floor with the people and let the kids pile on top of him as if it was just business as usual. Good times. Made a lot of young punk fans’ night, I’m sure.

Grimes, 918 Bathurst, Saturday: Only caught a piece of this young electro-pop lass from Montreal’s set in the dark basement of a Buddhist temple, but I’d go back for more based on what I heard. Sort of like Kate Bush with thwacking beats and a headful of hallucinogens.