Another Northside Festival has come and gone. The eighth edition will go down in the books as the year Brian Wilson capped off a somber and windy afternoon in McCarren Park with a breezy rendition of his 50-year-old classic Pet Sounds. Other highlights of the fest included free outdoor shows featuring Wolf Parade and Grandmaster Flash, King Khan in a low cut, ass-cheek revealing unitard, and an Innovation conference that included panelists Jenni Konner of Girls, Werner Vogels of Amazon, and Marc Mathieu of Samsung. New to this year’s Northside was Content, a two-day event that explored what’s next in original video content. Absent from the 2016 proceedings was Northside Film, which sort of faded away without explanation.

We sadly missed out on some of this year’s festivities as we were sidelined with a nasty flu. We did make it to a handful of presentations and talks at Innovation. The conference had the area in and around North 12th Street and Wythe humming and all the discussions we popped into were standing room only.

As for the music, which is what we like to feast on, we caught a few sets. King Khan & the Shrines put on an energetic show at Brooklyn Bowl with a couple costume changes that had the crowd howling with delight. The same night, 33 1/3 presented a showcase at Rough Trade that found Deradoorian playing songs from Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, Ava Luna performing tracks from Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, and Frankie Cosmos doing her best Liz Phair. We only made it for Cosmos, who, between songs, remarked that Phair’s songs were difficult. But, Cosmos and her band pulled it off with strong encouragement from the audience.

On Saturday night, we also caught Psychic Ills who put on a hypnotic set in a darkly lit Music Hall of Williamsburg. The band’s keyboardist was encircled with smoke, and two back-up singers helped achieve the Gospel-infused sound found on their latest record. Late night, we also hit up Knitting Factory for The Gotobeds’ amazing show. The Pittsburgh punks introduced almost every song by saying it was the last one of their set. When they finally did go down, it was after drum equipment got kicked over and the stage was assaulted with beer.

Sunday was Brian Wilson’s day. The almost 74-year-old was animated and clearly happy playing the old Beach Boys tunes supported by friends, including Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin. In addition to the seminal Pet Sounds, Wilson and gang played old favorites like “California Girls”, “Good Vibrations” and “Fun, Fun, Fun”. Wilson is certainly no spring chicken and his voice is somewhat worn, but to be in the presence of a true musical genius was inspiring. HINDS and Rostam (aka Rostam Batmanglij) opened, with the latter performing with a string quartet, modern dancers, and special guest vocalists Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot, Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, and Angel Deradoorian.

Below, you’ll find a gallery of photos from Northside Festival 2016.