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Friday night I caught shows at the Cake Shop and the Knitting Factory. The original plan was to see D. Charles Speer for the first time, but they were suddenly and mysteriously absent from the Cake Shop bill. Headliner Castanets did play and seemed a bit off. Their separate parts often sparkled, but things didn’t congeal. Maybe is was weariness (”It’s been a long week,” said frontman Raymond Raposa), maybe it was just a chance lack of cohesion. Either way, the puzzle pieces didn’t quite fit.

Next stop was the Knitting Factory, where the NY Eye and Ear Festival was in full swing. Walking in on Chaw Mank (a duo featuring Mouthus’ Brian Sullivan and Sightings’ Richard Hoffman) provided an immediate injection of high-decibel energy. The two squirmed and swayed and wrestled ungodly sounds from their instruments. Then it was down to the Knit’s Tap Room for SSPS, solo drum machine/sample/synth stuff that sometimes succeeded but never seemed to realize its full potential.

And, finally, as the clock hand approached two, it was back upstairs for Magik Markers. Elisa Ambrogio, Pete Nolan and a fairly new bassist began on the more noisier, chaotic side before crossed into song mode towards the end with a handful of numbers from the Drag City debut, Balf Quarry. It was nice to hear some familiar tunes from the new album, but traipsing across the city had me wanting a little more climactic, cathartic finale. Instead, things ended with bedroom-dirge album-closer “Shells.” I’m not it saying it wasn’t a beautiful end to the night—just not exactly what my mind craved.