Sunday marked the second half of Sub Pop's 20th anniversary music festival. The 10 hour event showcased some of Sub Pop's current up-and-coming artists and indie-headliners, as well as legendary bands from throughout the Seattle label's fabled history reuniting on stage for the first time in years. I was able to get my mitts on some tickets for the day's "revelry," and sure enough the stacked lineup did not disappoint. The weather was great, too. Here's a rundown of the performances:
Kiwi polyglot-popsters The Ruby Suns started things off with a quick set of tunes from their immensely-awesome and genre-itinerant debut record The Sea Lion. The grand setting of sun and amphitheater fit some of their more expansive songs really well, although the multifarious instruments and sounds going on throughout Sea Lion seems near-impossible to duplicate on stage--especially with only two people--and, as Nick pointed out after seeing them a while back, the group is still honing their live act.
Next on the bill was Grand Archives, a hometown Seattle band who undoubtedly boasted the day's most entertaining stage-banter. Grand Archives' country-tinged, dad-rock was easy on the ears and perfect for lounging in the grass to. They strolled through a set of highlights from their self-titled album released earlier this year, all the while joking around with the small crowd, which was still gathering at that point.
A bit of a surprise and a huge highlight for me was getting to see Blitzen Trapper, a recent signee to the Sub Pop label and one of my favorite bands from Portland, take the main stage next. The group wasn't officially listed on the festival schedule (there was only a "TBA" between Grand Archives and Kinski, the band on-deck), so their unexpected appearance made the rollicking, foot-stomping, rock-jams they played that much sweeter. The songs were a mixture of Wild Mountain Nation and some other stuff that didn't sound too familiar (but is potentially from the new album, whenever that's coming out).
The harder-edged, psychedelic group Kinski came on next, playing straight through a string of loud, squalling, (mostly) instrumental songs. I've heard some of their stuff on the radio before and it's not bad, but have never got into them. My fellow festival-goer and I took this chance to hit the beer garden.
The British art-punk quartet Foals then took the stage, smashing a microphone into pieces before they even sang a verse. Their twitchy, tightly-coiled, and sometimes ambient math-rock helped jump-start the hitherto sleepy crowd, only the openness of the amphitheater setting rendered their contagious and irreverent energy somewhat muted (for example: their opening performance for Wolf Parade's "secret" show the next night at the much more compact and enclosed Neumos was night-and-day better). One major highlight was the nervous look on the stage crew guy's face after lead singer Yannis Phillippakis punctured an amp with his guitar neck. Simply priceless.
Les Thugs, a French early-grunge band, and the first of Sunday's highly-anticipated reunited groups to play, came on next. While I can appreciate the ground these guys helped break, I was still listening to Skee-lo and TLC when they were making their hit records, and their sound is one I just can't really connect to. This marked our second beer garden-run.
No Age did their noise-rock power pop thing next. While Pitchfork and other tastemakers are pretty enamored with this Los Angeles duo, I can't help but agree with the sentiments of my festival-companion: "I feel like guys I knew in mediocre high school bands could play this stuff." Alas, another beer. Hang in there, I promise I get less critical.
The second reunited band from Sub Pop's early days to perform on Sunday was Red Red Meat. Same impression as for Les Thugs, however I enjoyed their experimental, garage-rocky songs a lot more.
After RRM, Bay-area based psych/blues-rockers Comets On Fire played an impressive, scorching set. The virtuosic talent these guys displayed--especially lead guitarist Ethan Miller and drummer Utrillo Kushner--was insane. They wailed and shredded and absolutely killed it. Their intricate, time signature-shifting songs are so dense, it's nearly overwhelming to comprehend what their doing with their instruments. Wow.
Up next was another formerly-active band: Beachwood Sparks. These So-Cal dudes haven't played a show in years, which they apologetically told the crowd, though I thought their sort of indie-stoner-bluegrass sounded pretty dang smooth. I never got into this band either, but I can see why Sub Pop would have signed them way back when.
The last of the reuniting groups, Green River, was far and away the one with the most hype entering day-two of the Anniversary party, which makes sense: As soon as singer Mark Arm belted out the first words of "Come On Down," people went absolutely ape-shit. The crowd immediately ballooned to its largest size of the day, and a mosh-pit of a bunch of burly, hairy, dudes materialized out of nowhere. The band was clearly loving the throwback atmosphere, too; they were strutting and smiling as they relived song after song from their pre-Nirvana glory days, and drummer Alex Vincent even leapt off the stage at one point for some token crowd-surfing. Although I was even younger when Green River was laying the foundation for Seattle's grunge scene, their energy and showmanship Sunday night was undeniable, and worthy of their legend. The band definitely satisfied the festival's contingent of loyal fans eager for their return.
Wolf Parade's closing set aptly capstoned the epic day. The Montreal quintet sounded confident, inspired, and genuinely enthused to be playing that night. There were a few songs from Apologies, of course, but the group used most of the hour-long slot to showcase At Mount Zoomer's chops; and shit was tight. The band's strong chemistry was especially palpable on tracks like "Soldier's Grin," and "Animal In Your Care." And their acute interplay and gleeful willingness to adventure was explosive on "Fine Young Cannibals," where they--don't look now right-wing hipsters--jammed out the song's bridge for a while. Wolf Parade was the only festival act allowed to come out for an encore: wisely choosing to leave the delighted crowd with the anthemic "I'll Believe In Anything." Their performance Sunday was so good that I had to go and see them again the following night (at Neumos), which, if nothing else I've said makes any sense, is definitely saying something.
No comments:
Post a Comment