Day three, the final day of Capitol Hill Block Party, is over. Four notable acts I saw were Flexions, Mad Rad, Blue Scholars and Truckasauras.

Also:

Band-by-band photos/videos/Twitter updates here
Day one notables here
Day two notables here

Flexions

L-R: Robin Stein and Tyler Swan, Devin Welch not pictured; photo by Erika Schultz / Seattle Times

As expected from past Flexions performances, the Seattle trio's sound at Neumos generally split the difference between ominous and deeply groovy, post-punk and reggae. Echoes abounded and most songs were instrumental, with Devin Welch's shattering surf guitar the lead singer.

Semi-recent addition Tyler Swan made an impression on drums. Flexions used to play with a computer for a drummer, then Swan joined, and the last time I saw the group, he was playing a standard rock set with the laptop going at the same time, mashing acoustic drums with programmed ones. At Block Party, he brought his own hardware — a Roland machine and what looked like an MPC sampler/drum machine — and set everything up together like it was all part of one kit. The resulting sound worked on two levels: the acoustic drums made a tribal stomp, sometimes chilled out but other times blocky and furious, and the digital drums made a resounding shifty crack. Which is to say the two types of drums didn't compete for space. With Robin Stein's smooth earthquake bass, Flexions' rhythm section reached new levels of muscularity and distinctiveness at Block Party.

"Thrash Hunk" was a riff-based pop song with Welch on vocals that indicated a new direction the group might explore, catchy and exclamatory with a bit of British Invasion bounce. It seemed well-practiced, which is a good thing not because I suspect Flexions doesn't practice, but because Welch and Swan are also in other bands (Past Lives and Truckasauras, among them; both also played at Block Party) and I'd feared Flexions might fall by the wayside or remain an infrequently updated side project. Looks like that's not the case.

Mad Rad

Buffalo Madonna; photo by Erika Schultz / Seattle Times

Speaking of reinvention, how about Mad Rad. The Seattle group hit the Main Stage in pastel dress shirts with a cellist, guitar players, and a drummer, apparently now an indie pop band after serving time in the rap scene.

With a memorable string of hot/sloppy performances, Mad Rad brought two vital energies to local hiphop music in the past year — early Beastie Boys juvenilia and unabashed dance-ability — and after getting in altercations with area club personnel and achieving a sort of bad boy image, got a manager and started shaking hands with Mayor Mike McGinn. Already an unstable compound, Mad Rad morphed into something...respectable? Well, about as respectable as an act can be whose main anthem "Crack the Blunt" is a crass tribute to sex and marijuana.

Mad Rad's Block Party set called on members of local acts Head Like a Kite and Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, and it was cool to see Seattle's scene tapped that way. Whoever made the call, Mad Rad producer P Smoov or somebody else, it was a wise move, a way of rescuing the group from insular gimmickry by making it bigger than itself. But Mad Rad is also deeper than one might've expected, as witnessed by resident wild man Buffalo Madonna's multi-song turn as a singer. He bellowed with a fake British accent and plied a not-too-shabby low-register tenor to Mad Rad's sound, which is basically now — or was it always? — dance pop with rapping in it.

Blue Scholars

L-R: Geologic, Sabzi; photo by me

Watching the Main Stage while the sun burned my neck, it hit me that one must never underestimate the popularity of local rap act Blue Scholars. Thousands of people rapped every word to the "The Ave," a song outlining life on one street in the U. District. The track came out in 2004, and Block Partiers Twittered about how rapping along to it flashed them back to high school. Very few groups in Seattle make that kind of impact on listeners and remain relevant year after year. It's easy to forget Scholars performances aren't just about what the group's done lately or planning in the near future. Nostalgia is in the works, too.

Blue Scholars' manager David Meinert runs the Capitol Hill Block Party, so of course rapper Geologic and DJ/producer Sabzi were on the Main Stage, but by the crowd's obvious enjoyment they deserved to be, and their chunky melodies and socially-concerned raps galvanized a dinner-time crowd into booty shaking and light fist-pumping. Sabzi played British noir&B band The xx's "Intro" at one point, noting that he and Geo liked "all types of music."

After the Main Stage set, Blue Scholars dipped into Caffé Vita where KEXP was broadcasting its Street Sounds show and performed new songs there that that'd just gone over splendidly outdoors. It was nice to hear Geo's lyrics in a more intimate space, particularly on "Slick Watts," a song named after the ex-Sonic basketball player. Geo seemed to name-check every single Seattle neighborhood, refreshing everyone's mind that even though Sabzi lives in New York City now most of the time, Blue Scholars represents this town to the fullest. Sabzi let slip that the new Scholars album is called "Cinematropolis" and will be out soon.

Truckasauras

L-R: Ryan Trudell and Tyler Swan; photo by me

I'm happy to bring the following news: Truckasauras is still the best band in Seattle.

The Seattle-via-Kirkland brothers and childhood friends made their instrumental synthesizer electro dance hop the heaviest I'd heard it in a while, testing Neumos' speakers' capacities in all the right ways. Percussion and keyboard sounds came out crumpled and gleaming, crunching and whooshing. I'd forgotten just how knee-shaking bass could be, how skull-rattling and emotionally affecting Truckasuaras' synthesizer melodies are when sound-checked carefully. It's a physical thing, Truck's sound, and the group's criminally short Block Party set showcased it neatly, quickening tempos and exaggerating bass hits from behind stacks of vintage analog gear. By the end of the show, the floor was pounding, jammed with sweaty flesh, and someone was smoking marijuana. Tell-tale signs of a successful dance party.

News: Truckasauras' sophomore album "Quarters" comes out September 7. Also, new song "Meet Your Replacement" featuring Capitol Hill rap group Mash Hall hits iTunes August 3. Truckasauras' Adam Swan voiced these bits at Neumos and on his Twitter, using Block Party's profile-heightening powers to boost his announcements.