The Flaming Lips / Photo by Abbey Braden

Welcome to rock'n'roll camp.

For its second year in the U.S., All Tomorrow's Parties -- a festival popularized in the U.K. -- returned this past weekend to Kutshers Country Club, a family vacation spot 90 minutes outside New York City in the Catskill mountains near Monticello, NY. The club -- the site that inspired Dirty Dancing -- is an all-inclusive resort, still furnished in 1970s decor, with video game arcades, smoking lounges, a movie theatre, a mess hall, ski lift, bar, pond, golf course, and over 400 hotel rooms, plus nearby bungalows, that all recall the eerie desolation of The Shining.

Translation: it's one interesting place to witness live music.

Tickets are limited -- roughly 2,000 were sold -- making ATP a festival experience like no other, one for the nerdiest of music fans, those who are more interested in trading notes about Merzbow b-sides than hot-boxing a Honey Bucket at Bonnaroo. Lines are non-existent; it's easy to find a spot up-close to the stage to watch your favorite band; the beer is plentiful; there's seating outside by the pond; and artists wander about with the normal folk, chatting up strangers (Jim Jarmusch), walking really fast between the indoor stages (Maggie Gyllenhaal), or tackling their friends (Crystal Castles' Alice Glass). The security even adopt the sentiment of debauched camp counselors: "Be sure to drink too much!!!" one instructed fans at the front entrance.

Here, read SPIN's Best and Worst from ATP 2009.

THE BEST:

BEST BEAVER SHOT: FLAMING LIPS
A dancing golden girl on the video display during the Oklahoma band's fest-closing set Sunday turned into a cosmic goddess as she lay down on the screen, parted her legs, and in a flash of kaleidoscopic strobes, proceeded to birth the entire band, capping with Wayne Coyne's emergence in a giant plastic bubble. -- ANDY BETA

BEST WAY TO ANNOUNCE A HIATUS: DEERHUNTER
Midway through Cox's second appearance of the day, this time with his main outfit Deerhunter, the frontman addressed the crowd with some important news: "This is our last show for a long, long time. We're going to devote time to some other things." What those "other things" are remain unseen (another album from the Atlas Sound, his side-project which performed earlier in the day, perhaps?), but the southern shoegaze/punk rockers made sure fans will miss them in the interim: Their performance was loud enough and such an ethereal experience that My Bloody Valentine should be jealous, especially when it comes to "Microcastle" and "Cover Me," which had Cox's vocals sounding like an angel singing from deep inside a shorted-out computer. -- WILLIAM GOODMAN

BEST COVER SONG: PANDA BEAR
Keeping the packed Stardust Ballroom enrapt from start to last note, Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox from Animal Collective) played new songs and exquisite highlights culled from Person Pitch. The highlight remained a rendering of a deep cut from his band's triumphant Merriweather Post Pavilion. Lennox dubbed out "Guys Eyes" to the point that the bass became scalp-shaking, while kaleidoscopic light patterns and the world's scariest little dog were projected on the screen behind him. -- AB

BEST CONFUSION-INDUCING JAM BAND: AKRON/FAMILY
Nowhere was the Flaming Lips' influence as curator of ATP felt as much as with Akron/Family's set. The Brooklyn-based band is sonically schizophrenic, leaping from Grateful Dead-style jazz jam outs, to unhinged, Tom Petty-on-acid country rock, to plain weird computer drones with djembe drum rhythms. It's a lot of sound from a three-piece band, and just when they drift into looping aural non-sense, the boys switch directions, which, with the set-closing song, found bassist/singer Miles Seaton hollering like an Apache at war and slamming the microphone against his chest over blitzkrieg hardcore punk. -- WG

BEST ONSTAGE DANCING: DAVID YOW OF THE JESUS LIZARD AND FAN
When deranged-derelict frontman David Yow wasn't sneering "HAPPY 9/11 DAY EVERYBODY!" to the crowd, his reconvened band the Jesus Lizard fomented the most stage-diving and crowd-surfing. Drawing heavily from their early 90's Steve Albini-recorded classics Goat and Liar, oft-times Yow pushed surfers back into the maw (and one in particular he made sure to tuck his shirt in waaaay down the front of his trousers). But the diminutive Yow then played the gentleman, taking a moment to tango with an Amazonian brunette to the slide guitar of "Lady Shoes." -- AB

READ MORE OF THE BEST FROM ATP ON PAGE 2 >>