The sunny opening chords of “Cannibal Resource” fittingly opened the show, setting the mood for the remainder of the night. All nine songs from the Projectors’ highly-acclaimed 2009 album, Bitte Orca, made an appearance in the set, with the remaining few songs being a mix of new and old material. One of these new songs was “Ascending Melody,” which recently appeared on the UK-only Temecula Sunrise EP. The track is full of text painting, featuring several rising or “ascending” melodies (clever ones, those Dirty Projectors), particularly obvious during the chorus. It was one of my favorite songs from the concert, embodying the radiance and playfulness of the band; unfortunately, the majority of the audience seemed to have never heard it before and watched the performance with little reaction.

The middle of the set slowed down considerably, moving from “No Intention” to “Two Doves” and finally to “The Bride” from Bitte Orca, before coming to a complete stop as the band sorted out some technical difficulties. After fixing the sound issues, another new song was played, “When the World Comes to an End,” which was debuted live on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show and has not been released on record as of yet. The band’s women–Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle–steal the spotlight on this (and, let’s be honest, every) track, which showcases their ability to flawlessly pull off complex vocal interplay. Bitte Orca’s first single, the funky, bumping “Stillness is the Move” followed, putting the crowd into a dancing frenzy that was further extended into “Useful Chamber,” the song that contains the iconic, cathartic shout: “Bitte orca! Orca bitte!” Translation: “Please orca! Orca please!” It makes little sense, but sure is fun to yell out along with hundreds of others.

A two-song encore containing “Fluorescent Half Dome,” another fitting choice, considering its placement as the last song on Bitte Orca, and “Knotty Pine,” from the Dark Was the Night compilation closed the performance. Leaving the stage ablaze with ecstatic songs, the Dirty Projectors cast their overjoyed light upon the audience, who walked out into the night newly illuminated and gleaming.–Cassie Traun, Contributing Editor

Things are looking much more ominous as I get off the bus Sunday, with threatening cumulonimbus brewing out over the Golden Gate while Sleepy Sun kick off their set for a small but stalwart crowd.

The weather may not be as good, but the audience today is certainly mellower, and also more diverse, covering a much larger age bracket.  Surely there are a few Pavement and Bob Mould geeks amongst this bunch.

The festival organizers have smartly decided to bookend the day with psychedelic rock acts.  I’m a sucker for the genre, and therefore groove to the heavy, lumbering jams of Sleepy Sun, who frankly are neither of the things their moniker promises.  Given the current conditions, though, that is entirely appropriate.  Cool set from a promising local band.

12:40-

The opening act at Tunnel Stage is Tommy Guerrero, a former pro skater turned guitarist.  The instrumental, downtempo music is well-performed if not particularly inspired, and not really the kind of music for this festival; perhaps a bit too middle-of-the-road for a crowd weaned on tortured angst.

Interestingly, beloved producer Money Mark (Beastie Boys, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez) is guesting on keyboards.  How the heck did that collaboration happen?

1:10-

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down are the first real “indie rock” band of the day.  Having associated with Decemberists producer Tucker Martine for their first record, and having toured as an opener for Rilo Kiley, one would assume they are similarly songwriter-oriented, and that turns out to be exactly the case.  Lead vocalist/lyricist (and San Francisco resident) Thao Nguyen offers some of the swagger of Alison Mosshart, tempered with the confessional tendencies of Jenny Lewis and the hotness of Ziyi Zhang.

“I’d like to name this the ‘bestival’,” Nguyen remarks at one point, “because it’s the best festival we’ve ever played…. and yes, we’ve played others.”

1:50-

“Spiral Stairs” is the longstanding nickname of Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg.  Though the much-ballyhooed Pavement reunion has already been announced for 2010, Kannberg has found time to release a solo album under the Spiral Stairs handle, and it sounds a lot like… um, Pavement.

Kannberg and his ace backing band throw in a couple of actual Pavement tunes toward the end of the set, and Kannberg remarks, “I’d love to play that one again.”  To which a band member dryly quips:  “Hmm, do you think that will happen?”

2:30-

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes establish their tweeness right away by plucking the first few notes of their set on a ukulele, then punctuating the notes with sickeningly cute boop-a-doop vocalizations.

Frontman Alex Ebert earns points, however, for going largely shirtless in defiance of the biting cold.  Also, he is by far the most willing performer of the day to get close to the audience, crawling down several times to serenade girls at the front rail.

3:15-

For the first time in the festival’s short history, we have genuinely lousy weather, with overcast skies, blustery winds, and even a smattering of raindrops.

Local act Vetiver, however, typifies the mellower-than-mellow, dreamier-than-dreamy vibe the afternoon is taking, and their set seems to pacify the storm Gods; mercifully, the weather conditions grow no worse.

4:00-

Ahh, NOW we get to the good stuff.  With their litany of distorted musical instruments and harmonized vocals in full bloom, formidable Brooklynites Grizzly Bear take the Bridge Stage and proceed to amaze for a not-long-enough 45 minutes.

I saw the band play for almost nobody in a small tent at Coachella in 2007; since then, they’ve opened for Radiohead, released one of 2009’s most critically-acclaimed records (the brilliant Veckatimest), and improbably landed in the Top Ten of the Billboard charts.  Not surprisingly, the band now inhabiting the stage is far more confident than the one I saw 2 ½ years ago.

The more diverse Veckatimest tracks – set opener “Cheerleader”, “Southern Point” – mesh surprisingly well with great older tracks like “Lullabye” and “On a Neck, on a Spit”.  Midway through the set, the sun finally breaks out from behind the clouds and lights the island up.  This causes the briefest of smiles to break out on the face of founding member Ed Droste, who earlier claims this is their windiest gig ever… a fitting follow-up to Austin City Limits, their rainiest gig ever.

Wind or no, the set is a wonderful warm-up for all the great stuff that will hit the stages in short order.

4:45-

Bob Mould is a legend amongst Gen Xers for his work in Husker Du and Sugar, not to mention “Dog on Fire”, better known as the theme song for The Daily Show.  He’s also had a longstanding solo career, releasing nine studio records over the last 20 years, the latest of which is the critically-admired Life and Times.

After so many low-key acts, Mould’s full-throttle set is a welcome and jolting burst of energy.  He seems invigorated, and holds little back while jamming out power chords with an effortless zeal only someone of his stature could display.

During the set, he mentions the crazy week that led up to the performance, including the birth of his bassist’s child, the replacement of that bassist with Sugar bassist David Barbe, and his own recent move to San Francisco.  “You’ll be seeing a lot of me, so this is sort of my first hometown gig,” he says, to huge cheers.

Looking around, there are a lot of graying temples – the most gray hair of the weekend, in fact – but it really doesn’t matter.  This is a great set from a great performer working at a level that matches or even bests his earlier days.  Certainly one of the highlights of the weekend for me.

5:30-

Over at Bridge Stage we have a return to the “pale and folksy” vibe with Santa Fe-based Beirut.  The brainchild of Zach Condon – who picked up on Balkan folk music during his travels in Europe – this band has the cachet of having associated closely with Arcade Fire and Owen Pallet during the recording of their 2007 album The Flying Club Cup.

Their set can’t help but be a bit of a comedown after the high-flying guitar rock goodness of Bob Mould, but I can understand why so many are beguiled by them.  Certainly, their eclecticism does not feel forced or gimmicky, and Condon’s vocals and trumpet work are suitably cozy and inviting.

6:20-

The hot streak continues on Tunnel Stage with one of my very favorite bands, The Walkmen.  A band that has spent many years perfecting their own brand of dreamy, jangly pop noise, they are still touring in support of their latest, You and Me, one of the best albums of 2008.

Opening with that album’s haunting, Morricone-tinged  “On the Water”, the band sounds typically excellent.  Lead vocalist Hamilton Leithauser, his hair chopped short, seems uncharacteristically jovial as the set slowburns its way through a collection of the band’s best material, with a couple of new tunes thrown in for good measure.  I’m loath to leave before the last note is played, but as the band tears into its biggest hit, “The Rat”, I’m forced to turn away and secure pit space for The Decemberists.

7:10-

Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists tend to be a polarizing presence in alternative rock circles; some worship them, others are roundly turned off by their lengthy song cycles and emphasis on verbose lyrical wordplay.

Me?  I love them.  I dig their braininess, their ambition, and their deceptively dark sense of humor.  All of those traits are abundantly present on the band’s latest record, rock opera The Hazards of Love, a contender for 2009’s album of the year.  The band has spent the better part of the year touring a full performance of the record, and tonight’s show will be one of the last performances of it in the US.

Lead singer Colin Meloy looks pallid and moody as he steps out onto the stage and strums the first few chords.  I figure it’s just the harsh stage lighting, but I later find out via his Twitter that he’s also suffering from a case of the Flu.  To his immense credit, the illness does not show in his performance, and the rest of the band is in fine form as well, displaying well-honed tightness on album highlights like “The Rake’s Song”, “Annan Water” and “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid”.

As a bonus, the band includes a hallucinogenic “visualizer” on the stage’s video screen, which accompanies the various tunes with animation of plants expelling toxic-looking potions, mushrooms exploding in close-up, etc.  This visualizer, a joint effort by four filmmakers, was originally scheduled to be debuted at a show the following night in Southern California.

Suck it, LA.

8:10-

I stay back to watch all of The Decemberists, which means sacrificing my photo spot for veteran shoegaze and noise rock legends Yo La Tengo, but that’s okay – it’s been a long weekend and this is a volunteer gig, so I’ve earned a break.

Yo La Tengo has just about done it all at this point, from critically-adored albums with great titles (I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass) to acoustic records to movie soundtracks (Junebug, Shortbus).  Few bands could boast as much hipster cred covering so long a span of time.  In fact, about the only thing they haven’t done so far is get me to see them live… and after a fine fifty-minute set, that modest task is accomplished.

9:05-

Back at Bridge Stage, weird things are happening.  The stage is bathed in harsh orange backlight, making it look like a huge dish of sherbet ice cream.  Clacking noises abound as taped-up, ramshackle pieces of gear are laid out.  At the center of it all, milling about in his trademark grey suit, is rock’s reigning mad scientist, Wayne Coyne, relaying instructions and checking microphones with a crew of techies clad in orange jumpsuits.  Coyne switches on a bullhorn and turns it toward the audience:  “Almost ready guys, almost ready.”  Then he shoots a couple rounds of silly string into the front rows.

The Flaming Lips have arrived.

Though I’m a fan of Oklahoma’s favorite sons, I’ve never seen them live.  My first opportunity was Coachella in ’04, when Coyne introduced his now-famous audience-surfing hamster ball. I missed that performance because I was busy watching The Crystal Method drop breakbeats.  (I’m from California.  Sue me.)  Now, five years later, I’ve caught up with the Lips again at last.

If tonight’s performance is any indication, the release of their latest album – the highly experimental, Can-esque Embryonic – does not mean the retirement of the hamster ball, which some have lambasted as a stale gag.  I’m rather amused at the way it is being used, these days, though.  For their grand entrance, the members of band pass through a partition in the stage’s giant LED screen, which projects an image of a woman with her legs spread such that she is essentially “giving birth” to the band.  Then there’s Coyne in his plastic bubble, which quickly inflates into a sort of metaphorical placenta before being rolled out onto the audience.  There are strobes, and confetti cannons, and the band bursts into the soaring strains of “Race for the Prize”, off of 1999’s much-adored The Soft Bulletin.

It’s all pretty awesome, and perhaps overwhelming – someone on the front rail has gone into an epileptic seizure!  While I’m trying to snap pictures, about a half-dozen security guards are swarming the pit, trying to fish the audience member out.  With the pounding of the band and the shouting of the guards, the screams of the audience and the clicking of dozens of camera shutters all blurring together, it feels a bit like a brush with insanity.  I escape with a couple of shots intact.

Fortunately, the audience member is okay and the show goes on.  Coyne mentions that San Francisco is one of the first cities that originally embraced the Lips, and for tonight anyway, the show should be considered something of a homecoming.  Most of the favorites are played – “Fight Test” and “Yoshimi vs. The Pink Robots Pt. 1” get stripped-down, singalong readings – and the new album is represented by excellent cuts “Convinced of the Hex” and “Silver Trembling Hands”.  Lovers of rarities get “Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear”, which Coyne claims the band had sworn to retire after performing it at the Pitchfork Music Fest earlier this Summer.

Suck it, Pitchfork Fest.

As I run for the busses, I’m tired but very pleased with the weekend.  Festivals are an endurance test under the best of circumstances, but Treasure Island is certainly a fine example of what can be great about them.  Alongside Coachella, it reigns tall as California’s best musical event.

-Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

For more information on Treasure Island Music Festival, please visit http://treasureislandfestival.com.

After a very successful 2008 event, I returned to the island recently for my third go-round.  I found the crowds bigger, the security tighter, and the acts – The Flaming Lips, The Decemberists, Grizzly Bear – ever more illustrious in stature.

Thankfully, none of that diminished the festival’s intimate feel or happy vibe.  It’s still a festival where the only sponsor is beer (Heineken), the principal attraction aside from the music is a Ferris wheel, and artists can regularly be spotted milling about with the audience; Sunday afternoon I ran into none other than legendary Husker Du frontman Bob Mould, lugging his own guitar to the stage like some 19 year-old indie punker.

In short, this festival only continues to get better.

Here is my journal for Saturday, which focused on electronica and dance music.

1:00-

I arrive at the festival grounds a bit late, having not expected so many people so early; I later learn that both days have sold out in advance, the first time that’s happened.

For ‘08, I shot and reported on every act that hit the festival’s two stages.  I’m forgoing that this year in favor of exploring the festival grounds a bit, and perhaps hearing a bit more of the acts I’m most excited about.

1:30-

Right now, positive tip rapper Murs is working the main stage, called Bridge Stage.  He’s so positive tip that at one point he asks the guys shooting live video how they’re doing.  His raps are solid, and he’s one of the best banterers to hit the stage all weekend, at one point proclaiming, “Music is free!  Steal everything!  F*ck it!  Make some noise for free sh*t!”

For that statement, anyway, actual noise is made.

2:05-

Some loud feedback squalls punctuate an otherwise placid collection of guitar-based songs from Argentine singer-songwriter Federico Aubele on the smaller Tunnel Stage.  I will later see Aubele get chased around the food booths for pictures by a throng of gawking young ladies.

I need to work on my guitar playing and South American-ness.  Also, I need to be eleven years younger.

2:50-

The volume and ardor of the crowd waiting for Passion Pit is rather jarring; there are at least two full-on chants for the band before the set begins, and their decibel level rivals anything I heard at last year’s event.  If this is what it’s like early in the day, I can’t imagine what things will be like tonight.

PP have great stage presence, but to me, they sound like pretty standard indie dance filler; no doubt they are future soundtrack darlings to a movie featuring Michael Cera and/or Jesse Eisenberg.  The crowd sure eats it up, though… what the Hell do I know?

3:35-

As I’m setting up for Dan Deacon, some guy in a Pittsburgh Pirates cap begins crowd surfing.  Suddenly, he barrels over my head and bounds onto the stage, giving the smiling Deacon a bear hug.

I later find out this dude is, in fact, none other than Greg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, who will be headlining the Tunnel Stage in a few hours.

Deacon’s stage presence is refreshingly bereft of mystique; he’s a guy who strongly resembles your favorite over-enthusiastic counselor from summer camp.  Clad in a Steve Young 49ers jersey and sporting a pair of enormous librarian’s glasses, Deacon certainly behaves like a camp counselor, too.

Between slabs of candied noise featuring distorted chipmunk vocals and a fourteen-piece band of percussionists, guitar players and dancing guys in orange capes, Deacon orchestrates elaborate pieces of audience participation, including a dance contest and “human tunnel”, that leave everyone within sight of the Tunnel Stage smiling.  The joyous confection is one of the highlights of the weekend for me.

4:25-

Britain’s The Streets – AKA rapper Michael Skinner – has achieved chart-topping success in his homeland, but is relatively unknown here in the States.  Maybe that’s because British rap sounds positively quaint by the standards of the hardline killing-and-whoring stuff that abuses subwoofers daily throughout this country.  Still, Skinner is obviously skilled at what he does, and it’s nice to see a larger and more diverse selection of hip-hop at this year’s festival.

While most performers pander to the locals by badmouthing L.A. – a tactic this local has zero problems with, I might add – Skinner makes the interesting move of starting a fight with valley neighbors Sacramento instead.

I personally have no quarrel with my friends in SacTown, but there’s a first time for everything.

5:15-

When was the last time you heard Jungle being spun by a DJ?  Okay, back up – when was the last time you heard a whole set of Jungle being spun by a DJ?  That’s what DJ Krush provides us during his 45 minutes at the Tunnel Stage, working out the bass stacks with a constant throb of percussive beats, through which occasionally come the downtuned, Quaalude specter vocals of classic rock tracks like The Eagles’ “Hotel California”.

In a surreal bit of serendipity, the video screen across the field is playing footage of classic video games – Mario and Zelda, the stuff I played as a kid – at the same time.

It’s not the oldest I’ll feel during the weekend, but it comes close.

6:05-

The name “Brazilian Girls” would appear to be more of a preference than a literal description, as none of the members of this New York-based band are from Brazil, and only one of them is a girl.  The girl would be Italian-born vocalist Sabina Sciubba, who dominates the Bridge Stage for the next hour with her considerable charisma.

The band behind her has perfected a sort of Euro art scuzz sound, exacerbated by songs with names like “P*ssy” (basically just the words “p*ssy” and “marijuana” sung over and over again) and “Sexy Asshole”.  Sciubba’s alternately sultry and playful banter ices the cake; “Do you like my accent?” she purrs, as she struts across the stage in semi-transparent silk leggings with a gigantic hypno-heart bullseye attached to her chest.

Why, yes.  Yes I do.

6:55-

I pass up LTJ Bukem to get some food; typical carnival fare, but unpretentious, and reasonably priced as compared to most festivals.  Quick plug for Spicy Pie’s spicy pie, which is so wrong for your stomach, but so very good for your taste buds…

7:45-

Let the insanity begin.  The median age for this evening is roughly nineteen years old, and they’ve all ingested plenty of liquid and chemical courage by this point.  I’m beginning to see that frenzied, wild-eyed look that makes me both envious and a tad uneasy.

Remix maestros MSTRKRFT are the perfect soundtrack for this environment; between their flashing strobes and savage house beats, Jesse Keeler and Al-P (Alex Puodziukas) can be seen indulging in smokes and swigs from a full bottle of Crown Royal.  In a nice callback to last year’s headliners, part of their set includes an extended remix of Justice tune “D.A.N.C.E.”.

8:35-

The biggest crowd I’ve ever seen assembled for a set at Tunnel Stage is waiting for Greg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, the same guy who anonymously surfed over my head earlier in the afternoon.

Gillis has quickly become the new face of the D.J. with his virtuoso mash-ups, all done on laptop, combining peerless mixing and editing skill with highly questionable legal ethics.

I’ve long wondered how Gillis’s stage show – essentially a one-man operation – would translate over to live performance.  Turns out, it translates with lots of crowd members dancing on stage, toilet paper blowers, and fireworks.  Yes, fireworks – lots of them, and big ones.

Between antics, Gillis drops a litany of mixes and mashes – some of them new, some of them familiar from his albums Night Ripper and Feed the Animals. They reference everything from Pixies to Tears for Fears to Nirvana to Michael Jackson, in any bizarre and brilliant number of combinations.  It’s a heck of a party, and I’m bummed that I only get to be in the middle of it for three songs.  Next time, it’ll be me crowd surfing.

9:25-

As far as I’m concerned, Gillis may as well have been the headliner, as I’m no big fan of the actual headliner, megahyped synth poppers MGMT.  Treasure Island is their last gig for the foreseeable future, and the band announces that to celebrate, they’re going to perform their major-label debut, Oracular Spectacular, all the way through.

I wish I could say this has me excited, but it doesn’t.  I snap a few pictures, listen to a few of the hits – “Time to Pretend”, “Kids”, etc. – then split, as a warm seat on the shuttle bus back to the mainland is more appealing than the prospect of dying of boredom.  Apparently, I am not the only one who feels this way; the shuttle lines are packed far beyond anything I’ve yet experienced at this festival, and it takes a good long while before I’m actually on a shuttle and moving over the Bay Bridge.

Tomorrow, we ride into Indie Rock Land.  It’s a more familiar environ for me, and the strength of the lineup has me excited about the performances to come.

- Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

For more information on Treasure Island Music Festival, please visit http://treasureislandfestival.com.

Opening with the first song from their critically acclaimed 2009 album, Veckatimest, “Southern Point,” Grizzly Bear began the night with high energy, showing an enthusiasm for performing that would persist throughout the show. An electric version of “Little Brother,” from the 2006 album Yellow House, included a spirited jam that was, musically, one of the loosest moments of the night. In contrast, “Lullabye,” also from Yellow House, was necessarily more subdued, making for a beautiful mess of vocal harmonies and dissonant guitar chords that explodes into an enveloping sound in its last couple of minutes. And, during a raucous version of “On a Neck, On a Spit,” Grizzly Bear displayed their skill at not only recreating their sounds, but taking them further live by infusing as much passion as possible into each performance.

For two songs, Victoria Legrand, the lead singer for opening band Beach House was also invited onstage. On “Two Weeks,” which, by now, has had its immensely catchy piano part punched into many people’s heads (of course, this isn’t terrible, as the song is fantastic and one of the best of 2009, if not the best of the year), LeGrand’s vocals were a welcome addition. It was just the minor change needed to freshen up the song a bit. Then, “Slow Life,” a new song that is set to appear on the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack, followed. Ed Droste, Grizzly Bear’s lead singer, and Legrand duet well together, and the track is an elegant collaboration.

To complement First Avenue’s house lights, Grizzly Bear brought along their own lighting contraptions, made of lights placed in mason jars, which were then hung up on poles around the band. From their music down to the lights they use on stage, taking a lo-fi approach and then innovating it is a trait that the band uses frequently. It’s one that is epitomized in “Colorado,” the only song played during the encore. The song builds from a simple keyboard part to having multiple vocal, instrumental, and sound loops layered upon one another, until finally releasing into the question that repeats, “What now?” For Grizzly Bear, who began as a bedroom project for Ed Droste to now debuting albums at #8 on Billboard’s Top 200, it seems that the only answer is this: the sky is the limit.–Cassie Traun, Contributing Editor

You know how the perfect storm pattern works:  Band earns loyal local following.  Band releases album.  Album gets great review  in high-powered alternative music periodical.  Rest of alternative press goes apeshit, championing band as its own.  Band’s arrival is cemented by spiritual guidance from famous rock ‘n roll luminary.  Then – once dust has settled and pools of journalists’ ink spilled – band is ingrained in the scene in such a way that it feels like, well, they’ve just always been there.

For Gaslight, the key review in question would be the rave their sophomore effort, The’59 Sound, received in Pitchfork last year, while the spiritual guidance counselor would be one Bruce Springsteen, who shared a stage with the band during their performances at England’s Glastonbury and Hard Rock Calling festivals this past June.

As Arcade Fire can tell you, nothing says “anointed” quite like sharing a stage with The Boss… particularly if you’re a Jersey-based rock outfit for whom Springsteen is constantly cited as a primary influence.

Now, cameos aside, it ain’t hard to see – or more appropriately, hear – why the press has glommed on to the Bruce comparison. Catch even a whiff of frontman/songwriter Brian Fallon’s vox, and it’ll be several seconds of double-takes before you’ve finally convinced yourself you’re not listening to the man who wrote “Badlands”.

Additionally, Fallon has an uncanny knack for reproducing Springsteen’s sense of melancholy confessional in his lyrics, particularly on ‘59 Sound tracks like “Great Expectations” and “Here’s Lookin at You, Kid”.  Then there’s the matter of that huge hunk of “I’m On Fire” hanging right out there in the middle of “High Lonesome”:  “And at night I woke up with the sheets soaking wet/It’s a pretty good song/Maybe you know the rest.” Yeah, we do.

Such admittedly glaring examples of homage might lead some to peg the band as a one-trick pony, a gaggle of charlatans stealing The Boss’s identity and re-purposing it without adding anything original.  Those people are hearing the hook without catching the rest of the notes.  As any fan will claim, Gaslight’s true identity is more interesting and more mysterious than it appears, transcendent of both journalistic self-aggrandizement and pigeonholing.  They’ve certainly done plenty to earn their accolades.

For proof, one needs look no further than their headlining set at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium on Sunday, September 20^th.  About half the audience knew every word to every song that night, belting them out with conviction befitting a church hymnal, fists in the air and hearts on the sleeve. The other half was quick to pick up the choruses and participate in the clapalongs and shoutback verses with equal passion and ardor.

It’s not at all difficult to get people singing along when lyrics are as fundamentally catchy as this chorus from “Great Expectations”, dropped on the listener right after rapid-fire allusions to Bob Seger and The Ronettes:

I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my first wife/
Everybody leaves and I’d expect as much from you/
I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my whole life/
Everybody leaves, so why, why wouldn’t you?

By anyone’s standards, that is the stuff of angsty indie rock Shangri-La.

Much of the live show revolved around Fallon, whose stage presence a la Jack White acted as a sort of spiritual medium to the past, in this case a past stitched together out of rhythm and blues, soul, and classic rock.  This was in keeping with a persona carefully carved out on the band’s two LP’s.

It should be noted that Fallon’s use of anachronism is more in the vein of a postmodern bottom line than an absolute means to an end.  His lyrics are pastiche in the best possible sense; they constantly evoke the specter of the past to haunt the present tense of dark little stories about dead friends, broken relationships and gender gamesmanship, in a sense re-affirming the constant and unchanging fallibility of human emotion.

Sunday night, Fallon carried this dual-pattern identity over to his performance and between-song banter, telling stories that, if not exactly tall tales, certainly felt like them; a reference to a girl he knew back in Jersey quickly ballooned into a story about how the girl dated men to steal their cars, then killed the men, then stashed their bodies in the trunks of the cars before abandoning them across the border.  Occasionally, he’d fall into a drawl and cackle while mumbling inaudible anecdotes into the microphone, and at one point he snatched a pair of black shades from a stagehand and put them on, appearing to affect a bit of a Ray Charles shuffle as he did.

The routine made for an unabashedly eccentric persona that occasionally threw the young audience for a loop.  Once the music started, though, there was no vibe in the room other than pure cathartic glee.

While the band’s lyrical content might cite anything from Tom Petty to Charles Dickens, its actual sound is very contemporary, combining the up-tempos of punk-pop with the production polish of modern-day alternative.  Band members Alex Levine (bass) and Alex Rosamilia (guitar) have cited influences as diverse as The Clash, The Smiths and The Cure on their playing, influences that (perhaps) show up more in the energy of the live setting than they do on record.  No doubt this is a band talented enough to see the wisdom of riding the Boss influence wave, but only to a point before surfing off to other destinies.

It did not take long for Fallon and Co. to bust out their signature tune – album title track “The ’59 Sound” – but they waited until about halfway through the 90-minute set before unloading tracks from their first record, the excellent Sink Or Swim.  While those tracks are more traditionally grounded in punk than those on The ’59 Sound, they still cover vast amounts of lyrical ground, like the dripping allusions to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that permeate “Angry Johnny and the Radio”.  And, of course, they benefit hugely from the brasher, more exuberant confines of the live environment.

While Fallon occasionally traversed the stage to coax jam sessions out of the two Alexes, both seemed content to let Fallon run the show while they competently belted out the hooks.  Levine was the more crowd-friendly of the two, venturing out to the edge of the stage often to work the audience, while Rosamilia hovered back near the amps, fixing an ambiguous shoegaze stare that indicated either sheer concentration or total disinterest.

With his beard and longish scruff hair, Rosamilia looked more like a member of Fleet Foxes than a Jersey rocker, but his guitar work spoke for itself.  Benny Horowitz shattered more than his share of drumsticks for his art, and proved himself an able spark plug behind a kit sporting images of erstwhile badasses Charles Bronson and Richard Roundtree.

The single encore included one of the band’s staple covers – a fun and fitting rendition of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” that, unfortunately, found Rosamilia’s guitar turned down a bit too low for the solo.  This was, perhaps, just frustrating enough to allow him to come to life and let loose for the show’s explosive finale; while Fallon snuck in the chorus from Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” (!), Rosamilia, in true punk fashion, proceeded to smash his guitar to tiny bits against the Fillmore stage.

Those two events happening at the same time couldn’t have summed up the band’s sense of irony more perfectly.

Heading out, I wasn’t the slightest bit sure what to call or categorize what I had just seen.  It wasn’t exactly retro, it wasn’t R&B, it wasn’t really punk, and it sure as heck wasn’t Springsteen.  Then I realized that I totally didn’t care; it was Gaslight Anthem, and for the moment, Gaslight Anthem has transcended the need for categorization. -Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

For more images, click the thumbnails below:

The Gaslight Anthem is on tour in the United States through the end of October.  For more information, please visit www.gaslightanthem.com or www.myspace.com/thegaslightanthem.

I confess I did not hold out much hope for a revised incarnation, either, especially after the festival lost one of its headliners, Beastie Boys, to Adam Yauch’s cancer diagnosis.  Put in an admittedly tight spot, organizers replaced the Beasties with comedy rockers Tenacious D.  While I loved The D. back in ‘01 like every other twenty-something in America, they were not then, are not now, and never will be festival-headlining material.

I’m happy to report, then, that despite the setbacks, I saw marked improvements in almost every aspect of the overall festival experience during my visit this second time around.  Dare I say, I even had a smidge of fun.

However, there is still something crucial missing from Outside Lands that perhaps only time can provide:  it lacks a musical identity.  It’s still too large, and it’s still trying to appeal to too many kinds of audiences; any lineup that features both Tom Jones and Mastodon is really reaching.  I think this fundamental flaw will continue to be a problem for it as it tries to establish a permanent foothold on the summer music scene.

As before, I was not able to secure press credentials (go figure), so I paid my own way and went as an average concertgoer.  Also as before, I went for only a single day.  I chose Saturday the 29^th, a day that boasted a strong lineup of alternative superstars with names like T.V. On the Radio and The Mars Volta.

What follows is my journal for the day.

1:00

I park at Fort Mason in the city’s tony Marina District, several miles from the venue.  This is one of four stops for the festival’s fledgling shuttle service.  I’m pleased Outside Lands went to the trouble of introducing shuttles to the proceedings… however, the service is not included in the price of the ticket, and you’re still subject to the fees of whatever facility you’re parking at.  Plus, they apparently have only one shuttle running per stop so far, and that is clearly not enough.  I’m the very last person allowed onto the bus, while the remaining throng of concertgoers is stranded for another half-hour.  I stand for the entire bumpy trip.  It beats Muni, but not by much.

1:20

As I enter the park, I’m handed the festival guide, and am pleased to find that it has been pared down considerably from the overcooked encyclopedia I received last year.  It is a well-designed, purely functional fold-out document, featuring only the schedule of performers and a map of the festival grounds.  The weather is spectacular, with clear blue skies and warm temperatures that do not feel oppressive or muggy.

So far, so good.

My first order of business is to use the portable toilets while they’re still relatively clean and lineless.  The one I enter has the aromatic aftermath of a recent bowl-loading (not the toilet, if you get my meaning), and someone has already seen fit to scrawl a message on the wall above the urinal.  The bottom bit is a command I will dutifully follow in a few hours.

The grounds are still too large, and it feels like days getting from one end of the festival to the other.  However, signage and navigation have improved noticeably over last year’s event.  Also, there are fewer people – a lot fewer.  This might be due to a lineup many perceive as a downgrade from the Radiohead-powered lineup of  ‘08,  but my gut feeling is that others had the same trepidation about returning to a poorly-run festival that I did.

Either way, I have virtually no trouble standing at the front rail for all of the acts I want to see.  While it might not bode well for the bottom line, the accessibility is quite nice compared to most of the big festivals I’ve been to.

Whereas I spent all of my time at the main (Land’s End) stage last year, this year I’ll be spending the lion’s share of my time at the amusingly-named Twin Peaks stage.  For ‘09, the organizers have smartly chosen to schedule the stages with music catering to certain audiences; so, while the pop crowd souses to their Jason Mraz and Black-Eyed Peas at Land’s End, the rest of us can enjoy the good stuff over at Twin Peaks without being bothered.

Such segregation does bring up an important question, though:  who, exactly, is this festival really for?

2:20

Darth Vader’s theme from The Empire Strikes Back blasts from the P.A., announcing the arrival of Tom Morello’s latest side project, Street Sweeper Social Club.  It’s a great cue, but an obvious one, and kind of a mixed message:  are they fighting the Evil Empire or aligning themselves with it?

Morello’s position in that fight is more ambiguous than it might seem.  While Rage Against the Machine’s lyrical content was/is a mouthpiece for Zack de la Rocha’s extremist Libertarian fire and brimstone, the band’s music – led by Morello’s distinctive guitar heroics – was embraced with astonishing ease by mainstream mooks, and inadvertently helped spawn the unholy nu metal movement of the late ’90’s that nearly destroyed rock.

Lead singer Raymond “Boots” Riley has always been squarely on the subversive side of the coin.  As frontman for Bay Area funk-rappers The Coup, Riley has put out a series of criminally underappreciated, uncompromising, and  politically-charged records over the past several years, including 1998’s seminal Steal This Album.

Considering the pedigree, Street Sweeper Social Club sounds disappointingly conventional.  While the band members wear spiffy matching black duds that play up the notion of militant revolution, the music itself is de-fanged Rage, all crunchy riffs and rat-a-tat string calisthenics.  Riley is a better rapper than De La Rocha, but you wouldn’t really know from the lyrics he’s working with here, which trade more in hands-in-the-air jingoism than actual substance.  If ever a revolution were to be suddenly neutered by populist theatrics, this is the sound it would make.

Still, it’s hard to deny that the band is fun to watch and listen to live.  Morello seems in a great mood as he unloads his bag of tricks, and the modestly-populated crowd eats it up.  Riley – who clearly hasn’t had much time to develop between-song banter – regularly informs the crowd, “We’re Street Sweeper Social Club.  We’re more than a band, we’re a social club.”  Later, he identifies himself as a Bay Area native playing with guys who are mostly from L.A., and jokingly refers to his hometown of Oakland as “six hours better”.  It’s one of my favorite lines of the day.

Ironically, the songs that come off best are the two excellent covers:  L.L. Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” and M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”.  Perhaps this is the best indication that the band is a work in progress, and that its material just needs to catch up to its potential.

3:10

During a long break between acts at Twin Peaks, I wander to the nearby Panhandle Stage and catch a bit of Portugal.  The Man. I’m not a fan of the band’s pretentious moniker or their earlier albums, but I’m digging their jammy stage presence and more accessible new tracks; if they were a bigger act, they’d be a great lead-in to fellow proggers The Mars Volta.

As the name would indicate, Panhandle is the festival’s thriftiest stage, tucked away into a corner and powered entirely by solar panels.  Portugal have managed a pretty good crowd there, but the stage’s P.A. is not nearly loud enough for the number of people, and the band’s energy feels pointedly muted from my spot behind the soundboard.

As I migrate back to Twin Peaks, I have several minutes to stand back and people-watch.

Interestingly, the act that has the biggest t-shirt support from the crowd is none other than the festival itself.  I’m shocked at how many people are willing to shill for an event they’re already at by wearing colorful t-shirts emblazoned with the line-up on their backs.  It appears the denizens of the Bay are genuinely, unironically thrilled to finally have their own Bonnaroo, Coachella, or – as several in the S.F. press have insisted on comparing it – Woodstock in their midst.

For the record I don’t see any transcendental cultural revolution going on, but whatever.

3:55

While airplanes buzz through the sky, incongruously hawking episodes of the new Melrose Place on the CW, the Twin Peaks stage roars back to life with something heretofore missing from the Outside Lands experience:  BASS.  Revered thrash-rockers Mastodon are by far the heaviest band of the festival’s short history, and as they take the stage, the bass stacks vibrate with a bowels-unplugging throb that rivals Loma Prieta.  Behind me, someone appreciatively growls “METALLLLL!”

Well… not exactly, dude.  Mastodon’s latest, Crack the Skye, is their most progressive record yet – closer in tone and spirit to Dream Theater than As I Lay Dying – and only occasionally breaking into the bouts of Cookie Monster screams and technical guitar runs that punctuated prior records like Blood Mountain.  This might offend the band’s more purist fans.  I, however, loves me some prog, and consequently Crack the Skye is by far my favorite Mastodon record yet.

Lucky for me, the set is heavily reliant on material from the new album.  They’ve maxed the amps out so much that most of the intricacies of the music are lost to the sheer power of the noise, but the technical acumen of the musicians is still on full display.  As twin mosh pits break out at center crowd, members of The Mars Volta can be seen nodding their heads at the side of the stage.  Singer/bassist/large-beard-enthusiast Troy Sanders bangs his chest appreciatively, the crowd dutifully throws up its horns, and eardrums bleed the Devil’s song.

I’ll take this over Jason Mraz any day.

5:00

Reunited Brazillian psychedelic rockers Os Mutantes are playing, but sadly, they’ve been scheduled on the far-off Sutro Stage, meaning I’d spend almost their entire allotted set time just walking over to try and see them.  Instead, I plant and wait for New York rockers T.V. On the Radio.

5:40

T.V. on the Radio have been on the road for a bit – almost a year, in point of fact – and it shows on their faces.  Everyone, especially guitarist Kyp Malone, looks exhausted, and lead vocalist Tunde Adabimpe mentions that this will be their last show for “quite a while”.  (He has since formally announced the band will take a one-year hiatus.)

It is a testament to their talent and virtuosity as a band that, even with so little gas in the tank, the band gives a typically ferocious and ebullient performance.  Opening with “Love Dog” off of their universally-adored 2008 effort Dear Science, the setlist freewheels through their whole catalog all the way back to the Liars EP.  Antibalas saxophonist Martin Perna seems the liveliest of the bunch, accentuating the guitars and loops with beautifully layered honks over at stage left.  Malone gives shout-outs to fellow performers The Dirtbombs, Mastodon, and The Mars Volta, while Adabimpe chimes in with my favorite speech of the day: “Look to your left.  Now look to your right.  You’re surrounded by beautiful people on a beautiful day.  You’ve got it better than about 95 percent of the rest of the world.  So, y’know… suck it up.”

Point taken, sir.

7:30

Ambient punksters Deerhunter are tantalizingly close on the Panhandle Stage… but I don’t want to give up my spot for Twin Peaks Stage headliners The Mars Volta.  They are one of my favorite bands – certainly one of my favorite live bands – and this is my first time getting to see them in nearly two years.

Opening with the heavy Zeppelinesque stomp of “Goliath”, lyricist/vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala gets to work right away, pulling down a cheesy festival sign bearing the band’s name, then proceeding to both destroy and make love to it at the same time.  The point is clear:  Volta fans know who the Hell they’re seeing.  It is the first of many bouts of microphone-kicking, spider-crawling, and general molestation of anything in sight Bixler-Zavala will perform throughout the evening.

In the Voltaverse, this is normal, healthy behavior.

The live band – smaller in size and more abrasive in tone than prior incarnations – matches Bixler-Zavala’s energy antic for antic.  Though there are still jams here and there – both “Viscera Eyes” (from 2006’s Amputechture) and new track “Luciforms” get epic guitar workouts – the band is not nearly as freeform as it has been on prior tours.  Older tracks like “Drunkship of Lanterns” – which, in the past, might stretch to upwards of thirty minutes – have been brought back down to more manageable proportions.  This is perhaps in keeping with the more song-oriented aesthetic of Octahedron, and it suits the band equally well.

I’m rather surprised to find there aren’t more enthusiasts of the band’s older material on the front rail; these folks seem more responsive to the material off of the later records.  It’s a wonderful sign for the band – especially considering those albums were the lowest-selling of their career – but still bewildering for a relative old-timer like me.  So much so, in fact, that I get a bit embarrassed when I’m the only one to let out an appreciative howl when guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez strums the opening bars of “Eunuch Provocateur”.

The standout track from the band’s debut E.P., Tremulant, “Eunuch” has only been played live a couple times in the past six years.  Getting to hear it at all – much less during a festival set – is a big treat, and the band digs its claws in with a primal urgency befitting their early days as drug-addled schizo trailblazers.  Rodriguez-Lopez’s spiraling upward guitar runs duke it out with stop-start lunges from the rest of the band, while a bank of strobes bathe the crowd in hallucinogenic flashes to punctuate all the rampant badassery.  The performance is by far the highlight of the day for me.

As the crowd dissipates into the afterglow, I look to the other flashing lights lining the trees at the far end of the park; it’s festival headliners Dave Matthews Band, who will be playing for another hour.  I wouldn’t mind hearing some of their set, but I know better than to attempt exiting with the rest of the mob, and opt instead to head for the shuttle buses.  I walk through the exit tunnel to, appropriately enough, the strains of “Ants Marching”.  As the sound fades on the second year of Outside Lands, I hear a scorching mid-song solo from violinist Boyd Tinsley, and the 50,000-strong crowd erupting in cheers that would rival a Giants playoff game.

Against all odds, it’s been a nice day.  I might feel differently later, but for now, it seems this festival maybe – just maybe – might have a future after all.  -Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

For more information on Outside Lands, please visit www.sfoutsidelands.com.

Take every current country genius around and put them all on stage together and see what happens. Pure bliss. The only thing that can make bands like Old Crow Medicine Show and The Felice Brothers and Gillian Welch better is to throw them all on stage together for a homerun derby of whiskey soaked rhythm.

On top of an amazing four and a half our set, the night was closed out with Nashville’s own Justin Townes Earle performing “Can’t Hardly Wait.” Then Gillian and Dave Rawlings performed a chilling duet of the beautiful Look at Miss Ohio featured on their most recent album, Soul Journey. What seemed to be the end to this wild evening was Old Crow Medicine Show performing their arguably largest hit, “Wagon Wheel.” Rocked like a southbound train, every individual on the riverfront of Nashville was moving their feet and singing along.

With a roar of applause reaching to the opposite ends of Tennessee, every one of these modern day legends returned to the stage to perform two final songs. The screams echoed throughout Broadway as Nashville again held a historic evening in its gentle company. Old Crow closed The Big Surprise show, performing “Tell It To Me.” –Landin E.  King, Contributing Editor

Photos of Old Crow Medicine Show and David Rawlings by Landin E. King

For one weekend in Chicago this past July, thousands of hipsters descended upon Union Park to gather at the holy grail of gatherings for the indie culture: the Pitchfork Music Festival. The festival has been organized since 2006 by Pitchfork Media, the respected, reviled, and always intelligent but divisive website focused on music criticism and commentary.

This year, the festival ran from Friday, July 17th through Sunday, July 19th; however, I only attended Sunday to see Blitzen Trapper, Frightened Rabbit, M83, Pharoahe Monch, Japandroids, Grizzly Bear, and headliners The Flaming Lips.

The first show on the agenda for the day was Frightened Rabbit, an indie rock band from Scotland. Their second album, The Midnight Organ Fight, was released in 2008 to widespread critical praise (including an 8.1 out of 10 from Pitchfork Media themselves). The band put on an extremely energetic show, despite lead singer Scott Hutchinson complaining of having a rough voice that day. Drummer Grant Hutchinson turned out to be one of the most enjoyable people to watch from the entire day.

After migrating the brief distance between the Connector stage to the Aluminum stage and settling into a lush grassy area, my friend and I laid back, relaxing to listen to Blitzen Trapper’s classic rock and folk-inspired indie rock-the perfect soundtrack to a sunny, warm Chicago afternoon.

Back on the Connector stage, Pharoahe Monch, the revered underground rapper from Queens, turned out what was by far the most aggressive, yet overwhelmingly positive performance of the day. Monch is an intensely engaging performer, forcing the crowd, one that was probably most unlike his typical audiences, to both pump their fists and throw their middle fingers up in the air along with him.

Later on in the afternoon on the Balance stage, Japandroids, who were one of my more anticipated performances of the day, played their first show ever in Chicago. Though their 2009 record Post-Nothing isn’t a highly produced album, I wasn’t expecting them to put on such a musically void performance. The melodies present on the record, though buried in some of the lo-fi noise, were completely absent from their show, essentially making the best part of the album disappear. Let’s just say that sometimes the DIY attitude falls flat, particularly when a band has little to no ability to recreate their simple rock songs in a live setting.

While we staked out a spot close to the Connector stage for Grizzly Bear’s show, M83 played just across the park and within eyeshot over on the Aluminum stage. The whole idea of having a live band performing dance music seems bizarre and almost like a waste to me and watching M83’s show certainly didn’t change that opinion. But, even though the repetitive loops with little blips of guitar work and keyboards had no appeal to me, their crowd was absolutely loving it. A mosh pit consisting of a sea of neon and otherwise brightly-colored hipsters formed and didn’t slow down in the slightest for the entirety of the performance, suggesting that although it wasn’t my cup of tea, M83 must be doing something right in the dance genre to garner such a response.

Riding high off of the release of their second album as a full band (the first album using the Grizzly Bear moniker was Horn of Plenty, what is essentially an Ed Droste solo record), Grizzly Bear, who released Veckatimest in May of this year, took over the Pitchfork Music Festival directly before the Flaming Lips, putting on one of the tightest shows of the festival.

One of the appeals to Grizzly Bear’s shows is their ability to recreate their extremely produced sounds on their records in a live setting, essentially bringing what can be considered another instrument, the studio, along onstage with them. As complicated as their vocal harmonies and compositions are on record, the band is able to flawlessly perform them onstage, either in the same form as the album versions or in newly arranged versions specifically for their live shows.

Beginning with the song that opens Veckatimest, “Southern Point,” Grizzly Bear had its crowd at the festival in the palms of their hands. “Lullaby,” from 2006’s Yellow House, found bassist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor playing a haunting flute melody. And not restricting themselves to the use of analog techniques, Grizzly Bear employs many digital effects in their music, applying them to vocals and instruments through multiple pedals onstage. Chris Taylor’s vocals on “Knife,” again from Yellow House, provide the most startling example of the band’s use of effects throughout the set.

After “Knife,” Ed Droste listed a few reasons why the band was excited to play their set that day: 1. They like the Pitchfork Music Festival; 2. They like Chicago; 3. It was Chris Bear’s (Grizzly Bear’s drummer) birthday. Droste wanted to sing “Happy Birthday” to Bear; however, Bear refused, and the set continued with “Fine for Now” off of Veckatimest. Unfortunately, the devastatingly loud ending of the song blew out the band’s monitors, meaning they couldn’t hear themselves performing onstage. But, Grizzly Bear persevered and played on, moving into the poppy first single from Veckatimest, “Two Weeks,” a song characterized by its distinctively bouncy piano melody. Luckily for the band, the monitors began working again during “Two Weeks,” making it much easier for them to perform the remainder of their set. And, if anyone in the audience doubted the band’s ability to rock out, “While You Wait for the Others” without a doubt quelled those fears.

Chosen to close the entire Pitchfork Music Festival were the Flaming Lips, always known for putting on shows of pure indulgent spectacle complete with tons upon tons of confetti, thousands of balloons, and a constant stream of images projecting from their huge light screen. This year, after a misunderstanding misprinted on Pitchfork’s website that the Flaming Lips would participate in the innovative, fan-centered “Write the Night: Set Lists By Request” when the band did not intend to, lead singer Wayne Coyne announced that the Lips would, in fact, be a part of this, taking requests from fans for the songs they wanted to hear.

Unfortunately, once the Lips took the stage and Coyne started talking to the audience, it became clear that they wouldn’t be sticking to this idea at all. Wayne actually stood onstage with the results list in hand, brazenly calling out where each song the band played was placed on the list, and even went as far as to claim that the Flaming Lips always know what their fans want to hear at shows anyway, making the results list pointless. This isn’t to say that there weren’t a couple of fan favorites thrown into the set-”Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear,” for the first and probably last time live, according to Wayne, and “Bad Days,” were both treats to hear-but the show was by no means the fan-requested set it was promoted to be.

Since I am a self-proclaimed “Lipshead,” seeing these beloved freaks of pop culture is never a bad experience for me, and their performance, as always, was fantastic. However, this being my third Lips show, and the third where the band’s show was essentially the same in shtick and song choice, it’s safe to say that it’s time for something new. The Flaming Lips have always prided themselves on putting on the most innovative live shows on the planet, but at this point, they’ve been the recycling same gig since 2003. It’s getting old and stale. If the band wants to keep their loyal fans and continue standing out as one of the top live bands, then Coyne and Co. need to come up with some new gags for their gigs, as fun as confetti and balloons are for everyone. –Cassie Traun

Photo Credits: Wayne in the bubble: Jon Behm; Grizzly Bear pics: Jeremy Farmer; Pharoahe Monch: eytonz (Flickr username); Blitzen Trapper: Matt Janicki

Words and Photographs by Cassie Traun

June 6, 2009

Typically, when I mention Minnesota and hip-hop in the same sentence, I get a response similar to: “There’s hip-hop in Minnesota?” And, yes, there is – a vibrant and highly successful independent scene is concentrated in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

Each year, hip-hop label Rhymesayers Entertainment and Atmosphere, one of the more famous acts from the area, present the Soundset Festival, hosted at Canterbury Park, just outside Minneapolis in Shakopee.

Doors opened at 11am on May 24, allowing for well over eight hours of hip-hop: including 35 artists performing on two stages, a custom car show, a b-boy/b-girl dance battle, skateboard showcase, and DJs spinning records. Headliners Atmosphere, The Pharcyde (reunited with their original lineup), and DOOM encompassed both local titans and nationally-known artists, one of the best aspects of the festival.

Performers began on both stages at noon sharp, after a DJ set on each stage opened the show. First up for me was  a poet/MC/activist El Guante. Champion of various regional poetry slams, El Guante will be competing in the National Poetry Slam with his “conscious” raps, placing him in a class of socially aware artists prevalent in the Minneapolis/St. Paul scene. As the title of his freely available mixtape Conscious is Not Enough suggests, El Guante prides himself on not only talking about action, but also taking part in organizing events, such as the Hip-Hop Against Homophobia concerts held in the Twin Cities. He played an energetic twenty-minute set, leaving the crowd bobbing their heads along with him.

From there, I migrated to the main stage, staying there for the next several hours. Eyedea & Abilities, comprised of battle rap legend Eyedea and DJ Abilities, rocked the hometown crowd. Scheduled to release their first album in five years, the duo mixed old material with new songs, keeping the audience on their toes.

Fresh off a trip to Afghanistan, Immortal Technique – the infamous, politically radical rapper, probably best known for his song, “Bin Laden”- took the stage next, coming from Brooklyn to play the festival. He was confrontational with the audience, reflecting the fury of his songs. Choosing to end his set with a challenge to the audience, Immortal Technique called on the crowd to pirate his albums, but with a couple of caveats: 1. Don’t be cowardly about pirating music, especially his; 2. For those who choose to download his albums, make sure you play them loud, particularly in front of people who might be irritated by his message.

Supporting his latest album Never Better, P.O.S. hit the ground running with one of the most dynamic and aggressive shows of the festival. He mixes elements of punk and hardcore with hip-hop, even playing electric guitar for a bit (unlike Lil Wayne, P.O.S. does have actual guitar playing abilities). Most of his thirty-minute set was spent on songs off of Never Better, such as “Let It Rattle,” “Drumroll (We’re All Thirsty),” and a personal favorite from the album, “Optimist (We Are Not For Them),” which exudes confidence, particularly in one’s chosen path, concluding “we make our own and if they don’t feel it/Then we are not for them (and that’s cool).” It is a sentiment that could very well be Soundset’s motto, as well as one for the Minneapolis/St. Paul hip-hop scene at large.

POS

Making his first appearance in the Minneapolis area since 2004, DOOM (formerly MF DOOM) took the stage, but not before sending an impostor version of himself, complete with DOOM’s trademark metal mask, in front of the audience. Supposed technical difficulties, with the beats and music cutting out several times, littered the set. I’ve since learned these were all part of the show, but of course, this was not clear at the time, and unfortunately, he did receive some boos from the crowd because of it. When he was busy rapping instead of messing around with sound equipment, DOOM performed a career-spanning set, including “ALL CAPS” from the collaboration album with producer Madlib titled Madvillainy, which was released under the moniker Madvillain in 2004.

DOOM

Brother Ali – an albino and consequently, legally blind MC from the Twin Cities – took control of the stage with his collected composure. He kept the audience’s attention simply by showing off his stellar rapping skills, not by using stunts or flashy showmanship. Joining him onstage for a time was Slug, the MC in Atmosphere, giving the crowd a taste of what was to come later. Contrasting with Brother Ali’s relaxed, smooth set were The Pharcyde, who were bursting with energy from their first moment onstage. Among the highlights of their performance was a cover of “My Prerogative,” complete with all members taking part in a set of dance steps, as well as a stage dive taken by Slimkid3 into the crowd.

Brother Ali

Closing the festival as the sun went down over Shakopee, Atmosphere’s performance was the one that got the crowd going the most. The duo is made up of Ant, the DJ who perpetually has a cigarette lit while spinning records, and Slug, who takes care of the rapping. Atmosphere played songs from throughout their catalog, including the fantastic “One of a Kind” from God Loves Ugly, which blasts indie rappers who imitate the group, a few tracks from their most recent album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, as well as one of my favorites, “Sunshine,” from one of four tour EPs released in 2008, Sad Clown Bad Summer IX. “Sunshine” is a straightforward ode to the summertime driven by a clear piano melody and uncomplicated beat; as Slug says in the song, “It’s so simple/I had to keep the song simple,” and by doing so, Atmosphere makes “Sunshine” a summer classic.

Drawing thousands from across the nation for the second year in a row, it seems that Soundset will be a mainstay, kicking off the summer in the Twin Cities for years to come.

Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

May 27, 2009

In the ongoing quest for the ultimate in Memorial Day entertainment, there is perhaps no better fortune for alternative rock fiends than witnessing a pair of gigs by fusion outfit Gogol Bordello.

Lucky for the West Coast, that’s exactly what happened this past weekend when the New York-based gypsy punkers landed in the small coastal town of Santa Cruz, CA., packing the local sweatbox known as The Catalyst to capacity with a throng of enthusiastic Bay Area partiers.

Yuri Lemeshev of Gogol Bordello.

For those not familiar with the band, Gogol Bordello uses highly interactive and often irreverent tactics to get across big ideas – “think locally, f-ck globally”, as one song cheerfully intones – and the band’s musical eclecticism is difficult to describe with a few glib sentences. Let’s just say that accordions, congas, and scantily-clad women bashing drums are all involved at some point.  If that doesn’t sound like fun on some level, I pity you.

At the center of it all is flamboyant singer and lyricist Eugene Hutz, Ukraine’s answer to Joe Strummer, and one of few contemporary faces in rock who can genuinely be called a “rock star.”  Following his rise to prominence in the film Everything Is Illuminated, it seems there’s no corner of the world Hutz cannot be found in these days, whether acting as fashion muse for Madonna, or starting up late-night parties and singalongs in restaurants from L.A. to L’viv.

Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello.

Hutz is also an astute cultural activist, and for much of Friday night, he admirably kept his persona in check with his message.  New tune  “Educate Thy Neighbor” was introduced as a story about a centuries-old Romani (gypsy) settlement called Sulukule in Istanbul, Turkey, which recently came under threat from so-called urban renewal policies.  The guitar he used for much of the night extended his internationalist ideals, emblazoned as it was with an East-West hodgepodge of Asian characters and Ramones stickers; so too did the makeup of his band, which currently includes members from seven different countries.

The band’s bohemian vision of punk, traditional Romani, reggae, and sweaty burlesque is a rather perfect fit for a post-hippie beach town like Santa Cruz, and Friday it appeared the GB faithful had turned out in full strength; there was nary a song lyric, chantalong, or fist pump missed by anyone during the ninety-minute set, which included an extended encore that lasted well over half an hour.  Watching from my perch behind a pint of Guinness on one of the venue’s twin balconies, the floor was a non-stop, pulsing throb of motion blur, expelling occasional clouds of pot smoke like geyser fissures.

Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello.

The stage seemed tiny considering the number of people packed onto it, but the lack of space certainly did not cramp the band’s style.  Backed by its logo – a slingshot with a star, representing a playful sense of rebellion – the band was a non-stop buzz of activity all night.  While the act is obviously well-choreographed, almost acrobatic at times, there was plenty of room for improvisation, like percussionist Pedro Erazo’s attempts to crowd surf (it wound up more like crowd swimming), or violinst Sergey Ryabtsev and Hutz scuttling back-to-back across the stage while furiously jamming out a song climax.

Of all the band’s nine members, Ryabtsev is the one who comes closest to matching Hutz for sheer showmanship.  Deceptively placid offstage, sporting a grandfatherly beard and an age (fifty-one) that could almost make him a founding member of The Clash, he magically transforms into a dervish of manic fury – with more energy than a whole band of guys half his age, I might add – once the music starts.  His violin is a key anchor for the band’s sound, and his playing is a brilliant tightrope of dexterity, grace and savagery.  Friday night, his perilous ascents up the bowstrings were so blistering that, at times, it looked as though he was trying to saw every one of his arsenal of instruments in half.

Sergey Ryabtsev of Gogol Bordello.

Accordionist Yuri Lemeshev was by comparison a far mellower presence, but his dexterity on the keys was equally impressive.  Guitarist Oren Kaplan quietly provided the hard rock edge, while Ethiopian bassist Thomas Gobena helped keep the madness afloat with his rock-solid (and fast) rhythms and time-keeping.  Erazo – in addition to the crowd surfing bit – provided backing percussion and an opening D.J. set.  Dancers Elizabeth Sun and Pamela Racine provided still more percussion, plus enough sex appeal to counteract the lithe (and to the delight of the ladies in the audience, largely shirtless) Hutz.

Though Friday night’s show featured plenty of the band’s lived-in staples – with a particular emphasis on 2005’s Gypsy Punks:  Underdog World Strike – there was also a sneak preview of tracks from their forthcoming album.  In fact, the show took the highly unorthodox step of ending with a brand-new, melancholy tune called “The Sun Is On My Side.”  It was an interesting counterpoint to the extended and thunderous climactic charge of “Baro Foro/Undestructable”, which found the band racing en masse from one end of the stage to the other, playing directly to pockets of audience in the dance pit as a sort of final curtain call.

Since the release of shining 2007 effort Super Taranta!, the band has toured relentlessly, conquering scads of festivals and clubs like The Catalyst all around the world.  If the sold-out gigs in Santa Cruz are any indication, Gogol Bordello’s tenacity and dedication to being a superior live act are finally paying off.  These troubadors never sleep and, thankfully, neither do their followers.

For more images, click the thumbnails below:

Gogol Bordello are on tour in the United States and Europe through July.  For more information, please visit www.gogolbordello.com.