ULTRA MUSIC FESTIVAL 2011

Miami’s Ultra Music Festival is not exactly a model citizen in the world of music festivals.  It’s no Burning Man, no Woodstock, not even a post-Kanye Bonnaroo. There’s no overt mission of sustainability or charity aside from the rather half-assed “Eco Village” shoved behind the Heineken Dome in the back corner of the park. The food options are narrow, unhealthy, and wildly overpriced ($15 for a sub-par plate of chicken fingers and a handful of undercooked fries? Yikes).  The bathrooms are few and far between (waits reportedly lasted up to half an hour). There’s no source of free water, which is a huge no-no in my book (water = survival when it comes to spending all day dancing in the hot sun, and forcing parched, Molly-driven ravers to pay $5 cash for every puny bottle is downright lethal). There wasn’t even a recycling facility (come on).

Bienvenidos a Miami.

Then there were the unexpected and unintentional issues: a massive and very poorly timed fuel fire at the Miami airport that canceled nearly 200 flights; scheduling conflicts with the Winter Music Conference, Swedish House Mafia’s “Masquerade Motel” show, and Chromeo’s performance at the Juno Awards; Bicentennial Park construction that forced organizers to make do with a venue size 30% smaller than last year’s…

And yet, wow. UMF 2011 triumphed.

At a time when many festivals focus on drawing in the maximum number of people with the widest variety of musical offerings—the “something for everybody” approach—Miami’s Ultra Music Festival seems to have known exactly what it wanted to be since its nativity on the shores of South Beach thirteen years ago.  Despite or rather because of its complete unwillingness to compromise on this very particularized vision, Ultra seems to have achieved self-actualization in a way that few other festivals have in this day and age.  The result? A three-day, sold-out wonderland of bass-laden, booty-shaking, face-melting EDM that showcased the very best of an industry in its prime.  With a line-up ranging from hot-off-the-press buzz-makers (Afrobeta, Beardyman, Trentmoller) to legendary standbys (Chemical Brothers, Carl Cox, Underworld), Ultra ran the gamut without ever veering too far from its molten core.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Ultra Music Festival is not for everybody.  But it is for anybody who loves electronic music enough to be blasted with it for three solid days without reprieve. And therein lies the beauty of the whole affair. 

FRIDAY:

We arrived to find the party in full swing, with what would soon prove to be a permanent sea of speedy die-hards blanketed across the mouth of the Main Stage and shaking their fists along with the endless pulsations of Benny Benassi, who seemed to take his midday placement as a chance to chill out, and was even spotted texting onstage during his own set.  Not that it mattered; crowds were way too amped-up to notice, and it’s unlikely that anyone who noticed would have cared anyway.

After checking out the scene a bit, we skipped over to the Live Stage, Ultra’s second biggest and best situated arena, where Norwegian downbeat duo Röyksopp was spinning some seriously spellbinding ambience that kept everybody moving.

Next up, an entirely unexpected and seriously danceable dubstep-derived nosh-up from classically trained house mastermind BT (a.k.a. Brian Transeau).  It was exactly what I’d been looking for all evening, with my energy level still sky-high and booty aching to swivel and swim.  BT would be playing a second set on the Main Stage on Sunday afternoon, but unfortunately it was scheduled for 1:30 p.m., hence I already knew I wouldn’t be making it unless I happened to wake up there.  Regardless, despite the small stage size of his Friday set, it was clear that this British club favorite and all-star producer knows how to deliver exactly what the people want, exactly how and when we want it.

Rave-style hypnosis.

We were riding high until we headed back to the Main Stage, which was all but deserted thanks to the Duran Duran buzz kill that was happening on it.  This is not to say that Duran Duran is not worthy of a listen, or that they shouldn’t be applauded for making a comeback, or that their rendition of “Notorious” didn’t put a smile on my face, it’s just that they didn’t fit in with the otherwise airtight line-up that Ultra created, and it was too early in the weekend for people to be ready for a break from the pulsing electro we had come to experience.

Then, right when we began to wonder if live sets were a no-go at Ultra, here came Pendulum, with epileptic, industrial noise layered under live drums and vocals alongside skin-crawling big-screen visuals that brought the energy and the crowds bouncing back to Main Stage. 

When Pendulum got overwhelming, it was over to STS9 for some downtempo electrojams and a rare break in the pulsing base. But you can only sit for so long at a place like this, so we ran over to Tiesto, god of trance, who’d come all the way from the Netherlands to hypnotize 50,000 of us into a state of pure euphoria.  Now that’s a great way to kick off a weekend.

EMTs can party too.

SATURDAY:

We rambled back over to the festival grounds just in time to catch Dutch dance DJ Afrojack, who has been drawing quite a bit of buzz lately for his ability to take crowd-pleasing pop songs and amp up their danceability factor by about a thousand.  When we arrived, he was doing just that to an already thoroughly sweaty crowd at the Main Stage.  Even the EMTs constantly roving the crowd picking up ravers who raved too hard were partying on their EMT mobiles.  We immediately joined in. 

Suddenly, we looked up to see a plane tracing out billowy white smoke letters across the cloudless blue sky: L... A… D… Y… It was like that scene in Matilda where the whole classroom of kids is reading out Magnus’ chalkboard message to Miss Trunchbull from beyond the grave (right? Anyone?  Never mind).  G… A… G… A… Suddenly you could feel the communal energy shift, everyone staring at the sky, cameras pointed, breath bated.  This was by no means a crowd of teenyboppers or Lady G diehards, but the woman’s a superstar, and a surprise appearance, we all agreed, would be epic, indeed. But no.  It was just a promotion for B…O…R… oh.  Born This Way. S a bag of D’s, Gaga.  The only way I’ll be obtaining your newest album is by pirating it.

Next, on the Live Stage, Simian Mobile Disco duo James and James (Ford and Shaw, respectively), clad in simple all-black ensembles, fully embodied their own indie-tech duality by producing a hip-shaking lesson in sleek and shiny minimalism via clunky analog DJ equipment that looked like something David Cronenberg might’ve dreamed up in 1983.  Hipsters and ravers: two birds, one stone.

As late afternoon seeped into early evening, my crew and I formed something of a disco train that bumped and grinded through seas of sweaty, smiling, dayglow-swathed revelers before pausing in the central dustbowl to rock out to San Fran house master Kaskade.  Kaskade’s always-awesome assortment of expertly-fused party tracks includes everything from classic dance riffs to spanking new samples from dub’s newest it-kid, Skrillex, whose own performance was regrettably missed by me.

From there, it was over to the multi-level Carl Cox & Friends arena, a brand new addition to UMF and “the largest enclosed sound structure ever featured in Florida.”  Here, spinning his heart out, was one of the most controversial figures in techno—although you definitely wouldn’t know it by the looks of him.  Quintessentially bald and bespectacled, this would be Moby, the guy who made electronic music mainstream in the early 90s, and who continues—as he proved on Saturday—to stay at the zenith of the game, churning out electric dance magic as vigorous as it was dynamic, as classic as it was fresh.

Bright like neon love.

 Then, it was time to head back over to the Live Stage, where two of the acts I was most looking forward to were scheduled back to back: Cut Copy and Empire of the Sun.  Unlike distant cousins Simian Mobile Disco, Cut Copy occupies an entirely different section of the indie-electro soup.  Actually, picture that soup as one of those kinds you can get in Asian restaurants that’s shaped like a yin yang, and think of Cut Copy as the yang to SMD’s yin.  Whereas SMD surfaced as a paring down of experimental electronic rock band Simian, Cut Copy evolved out of DJ/producer/songwriter Dan Whitford solo project, to which he added bassist/guitarist Tim Hoey and drummer Mitchell Scott to fill out his synth and sample-based sound. The pre and post-addition album titles say it all: “I Thought of Numbers” transformed into “Bright Like Neon Love,” a phrase that accurately sums up the band’s performance on Saturday, despite the fact that their set list drew most heavily from their two latest albums, indie-darling “In Ghost Colours” and this year’s equally awesome follow-up, “Zonoscope.”  Regardless, the band kicked off a welcome hiatus from the rotations with some good (albeit not so old-fashioned) live music that had crowds dancing and singing madly and brightly as neon love itself.

Empire of the Sun

If Simian Mobile Disco and Cut Copy are a yin-yang shaped soup, Empire of the Sun is on another plate entirely.  And by plate I mean planet.  (I know, that was a good one.) With their experimental yet pop-minded electric revival, the Aussie duo’s music sounds much like that of American counterparts MGMT—that is, until you compare their live performances.  Completely blowing MGMT’s notoriously lackluster shows out of the water, Empire of the Sun delivers exactly what you’d expect from a band whose album art resembles a space-age theatrical poster for Labyrinth. I have no earthly idea about the plot that unfolded onstage, but the mesmerizing spectacle of glammed-out costumes, interstellar backdrops, and Cirque de Soleil-style choreography left me far too entertained to care.

Next, we raced over to Main Stage to catch the tail end of what was clearly an incredible live set by British electronica veterans Underworld.  Luckily, the duo closed out with the soaring melodies and neck-breaking beat of “Born Slippy,” the song from Trainspotting that seems to best capture the gritty glamour and brash tragedy of the 1980s Edinborough club scene depicted in the film. The fact that this was one of Underworld’s last-ever performances made the experience particularly cathartic.

Deadmau5

To conclude Day 2, last year’s top headliner and the reportedly antisocial wunderkind of today’s EDM scene: Deadmau5, a.k.a. Joel Zimmerman.  Complete with a blinged-out version of his dementedly grinning mouse head and lit-up cube—notably brilliant elements that set him apart visually from the hundreds of other skinny white guys standing at turntables—Zimmerman spun his distinct brand of dark and bouncy techno for bouncing masses rife with homemade recreations of the Mau5’s iconic head.  Heavy on the bass, heavy on the synth, heavy on the flashing lights.  

Deadmau5 has a real person face.

Zimmerman’s bromance with Tommy Lee continued as Lee and his drum kit emerged on a raised platform, and Lee’s girlfriend Sofi Toufa (as in, the one who needs a ladder) strutted around below and yelled into the microphone, alternating between what some might describe as singing and what most would describe as prattling on when all we want to hear is the music.  At the end of the show, a blizzard of confetti shot out into the crowd, the lights went white, and we all trudged back to our respective hotels, condos, and, as the case may be, all-night after-parties that kept the city throbbing ‘til the sun came back up.

SUNDAY:

Sunday was spent flitting around like moths to a series of flames (the flames being any beat we could shake to), in a dance trance that didn’t stop until the music did. It began with an electro-house stopover at Wolfgang Gartner but quickly moved into an official State of Trance.  And by this I mean that for its third and final day, UMF decided to transform the Carl Cox tent into an enchanted grotto reserved exclusively for back-to-back performances from some of the greatest trance DJs in the world. 

Fake Blood

After getting down to British progressive trancer Gareth Emery, we scooted over to Live Stage to the beat-heavy house party of another talented Brit—Theo Keating, a.k.a. Fake Blood, a personal favorite that we’d first discovered at Ultra last year.  Despite his preoccupation with another music project called The Black Ghosts with Simon William Lord, Keating’s lively beats and computerized vocal hooks remain addictive as ever. 

A State of Trance.

We danced until Steve Aoki emerged and disappointed us all by eliminating the one thing we loved about him—his delicious Lion King intro.  And he didn’t even replace it with anything cool. So, the disco train left the station, and we made our way through twisting passages, grassy knolls, and strung-out hill-dwellers back to A State of Trance, where Armin Van Buuren promptly showed us exactly what the phrase meant.  Soaring synths!  Astronomic drops! Flashing lights! Rainbow glasses! Vick’s Vapo-Rub! Heart-melting rendition of “Use Somebody” that had the entire crowd singing along with our arms in the air!  When I emerged from the tent I felt I’d lost all five senses, and I wasn’t even mad.

The only thing that could tear us out of our tranced-out state was the Crystal Castles set happening back over at Live Stage, so away we went.  As you may know, I’ve already seen (and reviewed) Crystal Castles more times than necessary, and though I love them dearly, they’re pretty much the same every time: Ethan spins and Alice screams and everybody wears a lot of black. This time, Alice had a bum leg, so she couldn’t even crowd surf.  But I still danced my pants off. 

Not Beardyman, but a man with a beard.

Next up, something truly new and different: London-based beatboxer extraordinaire, Beardyman.  This guy is pretty incredible, folks—his entire show consists of off-the-cuff beatboxing and live looping technology.  As in, every sound that comes out of his speakers is a sound that he made with his mouth while he was standing there in front of us.  You’ve got to see it to believe it—it’s a feat admirable enough to forgive the shameless self-promotion in the form of Windows ‘95-style graphics that came along with it.  Expect to see big things from this up-and-comer.

After Beardyman’s 20-minute set (apparently he was a last minute addition), it was time for MSTRKRFT, the Canadian dance duo comprised of Death from Above 1979's Jesse F. Keeler and producer Al-P. With a slew of expertly crafted remixes and rollicking beats, these guys just know how to make people move, and we love them for it.

The Chemical Brothers

MSTRKRFT provided the perfect warm-up for what was without a doubt the most epic performance of the entire weekend.  The fact that it happened to be the top headliner performing the final set of the festival just goes to show how great UMF’s organizers are at their job.  Enter the pioneers of big beat; the original unifiers of dance, rock and rap; the granddaddies of arena-sized electronica: The Chemical Brothers. Living up to every expectation and then some, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons put on the show of the century: back to back to back flawlessness, like a thousand moving parts all coming together into a perfect machine.  As mind-melting visuals flashed across the screens—a mechanical horse, a human body made of light bulbs, the most terrifying clown in the history of the world screeching, “YOU’RE MY CHILDREN NOW!”—sound and vision melded into one big bursting sensation that seemed to coat the inside and outside of every single body in the park.  Walls of blood-curdling sound seemed to reach down and scoop up the entire crowd by our earlobes, lifting us until it seemed like our ears would tear away from our skulls, and then at the last possible second dropping us back down into a featherbed of liquid beats, the kind that makes you look over at your friends and scream “OH SHIT!” into their beaming little faces.  Pure bliss.

Ultra = Bliss.

A confession: when it comes to music, I’m a hedonist.  I seek out sounds that bring me pleasure, that I can feel deep down in my belly, that radiate from my flailing limbs. This is why Ultra is so incredible to me—and also why it’s so difficult to capture it in writing.

Novelist Nick Hornby says, "I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out.  It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part."  In Ultra, we sum it up in just two words: “TOTAL FACEMELT.”

The End.

By Hilary Cadigan
Photo Credits: Hilary Cadigan, Rob Royall, Stacy Komitor

Phish Rocks the Phuck Out at ACL 2010

Due to their living legend status and cultish following, it’s hard to review a Phish show without stating your credentials up front. It’s intimidating. People live for this shit. So, I’d like to state right here that while I’ve liked Phish since middle school and did in fact experience them live at Bonnaroo in ’09, I consider myself a Phish noob. According to iTunes, two out of my top three most-played Phish songs are from Farmhouse, and one actually is “Farmhouse.” In short, I am very low on the totem pole of Phish credibility, and therefore have probably not earned the right to even review one of their shows, let alone eulogize about why Phish is special.

However, this is my blog, and in this land, I am queen. So here goes, from the mouth of the recently converted: one noob’s tribute to the greatness of Phish.

Phish is special because they picked up where the Grateful Dead left off, forming the axis around which a whole network of smaller jam bands orbit, and channeling the energy of an entirely peaceful subculture based only on a shared love of jamming and everything that comes with it. Of course, things can start to feel exclusive and intimidating, because this is one of those cases where you either get it or you don’t, and the transition from general enjoyment to “getting it” is more like an epiphany than anything else, sustained by the communal energy that surrounds any Phish concert, like walking into a room full of people and suddenly realizing they’re all your best friends. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.

A friend of mine once told me that I’m the kind of person who would accidently join a cult and not realize it until I’d sucked down half the poisoned Kool-Aid. I will not deny that she’s probably right, but again: my review, my rules. If I’m drinking the Kool-Aid, you are too.

From what I gathered, Friday’s performance was a solid (albeit noob-infested) paradigm of Phishness, complete with prime covers of Talking Head’s “Cities” and Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll.” According to a 200-person-strong Facebook group called “Texas Needs Phish Too!,” it was the first time Phish has performed in Texas since their September 1999 show at South Park Meadows 11 years ago. As such, the band aimed to please, the audience was dancing and spirits were high—whenever the guy behind us screamed “PHISH IS THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIIIIIIIME!” we all raised our fists in solidarity.

At a Phish show, everything makes sense. Yes, Trey’s funky chord progressions and ecstatic noodling will put chills down your spine, but half of what makes Phish so awesome is how much their fans love them. The appeal of their shows is a more purified version of the appeal of music festivals in general. To me, there is nothing more wonderful than the chance to come together with a whole bunch of people who love what I love, and just love that love together under the sun for a few glorious days. That love is music, but it is more than music—it is the very specific culture of the music festival, which is music in its largest and most sociable form, a celebration of music and what music can do, which is to bring people together to dance or bob their heads or shuffle their feet or even just stand still beholding the explosions of sound and spectacle bursting and gushing and coursing around them like a supersonic hailstorm of awesome. Phish provides a special outlet for this love because the live experience is so firmly embedded in the music they produce.

In simpler terms: if you believe, as I tend to, that a band is only as good as their live show, and that a huge part of that live show is shaped by the passion of its audience, then you really just can’t beat Phish.

So Phish, here's to you. I am yours, phorevermore.

Setlist:

1. Down with Disease
2. Cities
3. Possum
4. Wolfman's Brother
5. Chalk Dust Torture
6. Rock & Roll
7. 2001
8. Backwards Down The Number Line
9. Harry Hood
10. Light
11. Suzy Greenberg
12. You Enjoy Myself

Encore:
1. Cavern
2. First Tube

Written by Hilary Cadigan, Photo by Max Blau

CocoRosie at Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, 9/21/10)

Part Anthropologie catalogue, part Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a dash of Puccini and a splash of Charlie Chaplin. Throw in some CrazySexyCool-era TLC for good measure and you might have some idea of what a CocoRosie concert feels like.

Yeah, they're pretty easy to hate upon for their whole prodigal émigré shtick, but on Tuesday at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, CocoRosie was totally captivating, providing a full-sensory experience of shifting sounds and enchanting visuals that truly blew me away.

In the center of the stage sat an old wooden crib with a slightly sinister-looking baby painted on the side, innovatively converted into a drum kit and flanked by a grand piano, a bright blue harp, a lopsided keyboard, and a table covered in a clutter of battery-operated children’s toys that would later be used as instruments. The place looked more like a pimped-out nursery than a music stage, and Bianca "Coco" and Sierra "Rosie" Casady matched their surroundings well, dressed up like little girls who just raided a fashionable mother’s decade-spanning closet.

Live, the freak-folky sister act succeeds where their recordings fall short, managing to draw listeners fully into the strange, carefully crafted little world they so clearly live in. Heady, uncanny, and slightly cloying, this place is a cosseted fantasy land of lovingly crayoned rainbows and expensive vials of Parisian patchouli. There are plenty of vintage costumes to try on. Come on in.

There’s something a little Flowers in the Attic about the whole affair, but from the floor of the Variety—where throngs of decked out, boozed up cult fans screeched their praises and even, in rare moments of composure, tossed flowers—CocoRosie seemed nothing short of fabulous. As did the truly fantastic beatboxing of lovable Vanilla Ice doppelganger Tez, who wore sweet flip-up sunglasses and possessed some serious skillz on the mic. His 10-minute solo during an intermission was one of the coolest parts of the whole show. 

Also worth mentioning, the stupid fake mustaches that Coco and Rosie have been shoving down our throats lately (gender-bending sensibility: thoroughly noted) were, happily, nowhere to be seen.

The Casady sisters have certainly retained the bond they nurtured back in Paris while recording their first album together, the appropriately titled La Maison de Mon Rêve (The House of My Dreams). Their most recent album, 2010’s Grey Oceans, has a similarly enchanting feel to it. Sierra’s classically-trained soprano bubbles up against Bianca’s grating warble, which kind of sounds like the voice of Danny Torrance’s finger in The Shining (“Red rum, red rum, red ruuummm…” You remember).

In Grey Oceans, the sisters toy with a widened range of influences, all spliced up and pasted together, with results ranging from the intricate beauty of medieval mosaics to the tawdry, gluey messes of overwrought decoupage.

The concert showcased this bold blending at its best. The lovely Judy Garland-esque chorus sandwiched between the mournful vocals, slow-jam percussion, and delicious brass accents of “Lemonade.” The lindy hop patty-cake cameo of “Hopscotch.” The gorgeously danceable “Fairy Paradise,” where smiling Sierra’s haunting coloratura sidles alongside a particularly delightful stretch of stoic Bianca-style lyricism in which “trance music makes the fairies dance.”

CocoRosie is what Tegan & Sara might become if they went to Devendra Banhart’s house, took a whole bunch of acid, and started believing in fairies. “Welcome to New Weird America,” the fairies would say. “You’ll like it here.”

Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan

Crystal Castles at Masquerade (Atlanta, 9/8/10)

In May, indie-electro duo Alice Glass and Ethan Kath, aka Crystal Castles, released their second LP. It was named, in a typical show of studied apathy, Crystal Castles (II).

I loved it less that Crystal Castles (I), but not very much less. Ultimately, the album proved, like most successful sophomore efforts, unafraid to grow away from the greatness of its predecessor, with that natural ease toward tranquility that tends to come with age. Here, while the happy mix of distortions and syncopations remain, the jagged Atari sounds of their earlier material give way to a new kind of intricate yet hypnotic layering. See: "I Am Made of Chalk," which closes out the album by distilling all the noise into a strange and haunting lullaby of electronic cooing noises reminiscent of baby animals communing with mom animals on Planet Earth. Which is nice.

But, as suggested by the above photograph, at a Crystal Castles concert we do not have these moments of stillness—not once, from opener “Fainting Spells” to second encore “Yes No,” a B-side followed by Glass stalking off stage, as she always does. Don't worry, Alice hasn't grown up. Or if she has, she's not letting on. There was, in fact, a notable sameness between this and pre-2010 shows—they actually played more old stuff than new, but it didn't feel stale.

There's something boldly satisfying in the way CC forces us to work through their electric blankets of curdled noise to get inside the delicious beats underneath. The flailing limbs flailed on through “Courtship Dating” and the spastic shrieks of “Insectica” (featuring a rare moment in which Ethan stepped out from behind his turntable to rock out on the guitar), before accelerating into the double-time, double- spastic wilderness of “Doe Deer,” the ironically-titled sonic translation of a rabid monkey gang-bang.

And while I remain decidedly un-thrilled by the synthy, syrupy futurepop of inexplicable single “Celestica,” it did function better live—providing slight reprieve from the pounding without breaking anyone’s momentum. But "Celestica" pales in comparison to a song like “Baptism” (which I'd like to label the shoulda-been single of Crystal Castles [II]), when the itchy noise blanket is suddenly stripped away to reveal a deliciously clean and catchy techno beat that feels at once classic, rare, and totally rewarding. This, my friends, is something to shake your shit to.

The middle of the show was one big delicious soup of popular favorites from 2008, including “Crimewave,” “Untrust Us,” and of course, “Alice Practice, ” proving perhaps that ultimately, for all their ‘tude and grandeur, Crystal Castles is here to give us exactly what we want. Ethan stoically pumps out the jams in his hoodie while Alice, with kohl-rimmed cat eyes and an entirely black ensemble, shrieks and thrashes amidst an epileptic wash of strobe lights, repeatedly stage-diving into the sweaty sea of limbs below.

As the tired-looking security guards snatched up less-famous crowd-surfers washing up from the aforementioned sea, we on the floor bounced in unison until those achy old floorboards felt like they'd cave in. We watched transfixed as Alice danced atop the drum set and slugged down what I’m pretty sure was a bottle of whiskey onstage. And it’s not like we didn’t know she’d do these things, but we really do love the way she does them. Yeah, she can be a bit of a turd sometimes—from snubbing Texans to pirating blog art to punching Spanish security guards in the face—but for some reason the lady remains, in my eyes, utterly forgivable and totally bad-ass. 

Maybe it’s because she’s Canadian.

Review and Photos by Hilary Cadigan

Here We Go Magic: My First Official Interview!

I’m not going to lie. I almost bitched out.

I’d never interviewed a band before, and I’d planned on descending upon my first such experience with a great deal of impenetrable coolness and informed insight. Upon my arrival at The Earl on August 6th, however, I realized that I was neither cool nor informed. In fact, I was woefully unprepared and kind of sweaty. It seemed best to just watch Brooklyn-based indie rockers Here We Go Magic from the shadowy corners of lameness and then flee the scene. But then, all of a sudden, I realized that this was one of those do-or-die moments, and it was time to do. So I did. And it was splendid! Read on, friends.

Enter Luke Temple, Here We Go Magic’s founding and formerly only member, an amiably disheveled and disarmingly unassuming guy with a mustache. He smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk outside the venue while I fumbled around, trying to introduce myself as someone who was not retarded. I failed, but Temple was totally cool.

“So, uh, where did you get your name?” Proving myself an ultimate noob from the get-go seemed like a safe way to play it. “Well, I was on a train, going to New Jersey and staring out the window at Newark—the toilet of America,” Temple deadpanned. I liked him already. “It was very unromantic, in fact there’s nothing magical about it at all, and I was saying to myself, ‘Here we go, this is really depressing. But maybe I should think good thoughts,’ so I was like, ‘Magic! Here We Go Magic!’ I just flipped it, you know?”

Beginning his music career as a solo act, Temple recorded Here We Go Magic’s eponymous debut album in his apartment, entirely alone. As such, he explained, “the whole record has a real hushed quality, just out of necessity. After work, I’d start at like 8:00 at night and go ‘til 10:00 in the morning. I’d have to play real quiet because I had neighbors and thin walls. It was much more of a personal, internal kind of trip—I did the whole thing on headphones, pretty much sitting on one chair, very simple set-up, very limited. I worked very quickly as a result of that.”

Then, he had to throw a band together very quickly. Due to all the digitally-layered sounds of his first album, there was no way Temple could physically perform by himself in a live setting. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, until he caught the attention of one Edward Droste, frontman for another Brooklyn-based indie rock band, Grizzly Bear.

“Ed heard ‘Tunnelvision’ on, like, satellite radio while he was on an airplane or something weird like that, and he really liked it so he wrote about it on his blog,” Temple told me, without a touch of conceit. “Meanwhile, I didn’t know that happened. I was visiting my mom over Christmas and I remember checking the computer one day, and normally we were getting like fifty MySpace hits a day, and all of a sudden on this day there were like, fifteen hundred MySpace hits, and I was like, what? Is this some kind of glitch? Was there some kind of back log that just suddenly got filtered through?”

Suddenly, Temple’s little lone musical project was catapulted into the public eye. From there, it was only a matter of time until Droste called upon Here We Go Magic to sign on as openers for his 2009 tour.

“It’s amazing, we became a band and then all of a sudden, like two weeks later, we’re off on this tour with Grizzly Bear. We didn’t even really have our shit together at that point. And it was right after [Grizzly Bear released their third album] Veckatimest, which went to #8 on the Billboard charts. That was when they kind of crossed over from indie to this mainstream success, so we were playing for, like, three thousand kids a night. It was an unbelievable introduction into being a live band,” Temple said. “Plus, I’ve been a huge fan of Grizzly Bear’s music for a long time so that was kind of like a little dream come true for me.”

Ultimately, Here We Go Magic’s evolutionary story is almost uncannily similar to Grizzly Bear’s. Not only did Edward Droste also begin his music career as a solo project, but Here We Go Magic’s dreamlike propulsion into the public eye mirrors Grizzly Bear’s own big break, when they toured with Radiohead in 2008 after receiving some serious accolades from guitarist Johnny Greenwood. In a way, Here We Go Magic has entered into an interesting legacy of musical networking, where the bands themselves select their successors.

Of course, what is music anyway if not a constant progression, a constant cycle of give and take? Luke Temple cites his own evolution from solo project to five-piece band: “Working with a band is sort of a democracy—you have to compromise and be introduced to everyone’s distinct contributions.” This past June, Here We Go Magic released their second album Pigeons—Temple’s first foray into recording with a full band.

Onstage, delicate, ethereal dream-drops like “Fangela” and “Tunnelvision” transform into jangly, freewheeling, almost raucous jam-outs. But it’s a controlled kind of chaos, and what’s lost in sheer sonic beauty is redeemed by Temple’s unflappable likability. He is the ideal anti-frontman—no irritating stage banter, no pretentious airs, no showboating, just passionate grit and humble aptitude. And despite his solo success, Temple remains utterly willing to embrace the fact that being part of a band means relinquishing a fair share of autonomy: “Now that we’ve toured for a year straight, by the time we record the next album it will have been almost two years probably, and I’m really excited about that because we have a dynamic together that we didn’t have when we made that first record, so it’s just going to keep changing.”

Goodbye, Newark. Here We Go Magic.

By Hilary Cadigan
Photos by Christina Krudy and Hilary Cadigan

Forecastle Music Festival 2010 (Louisville, Kentucky)

Forecastle Music Festival was a success. Particularly for me, having managed to snag a bed at a friend’s parents’ condo, conveniently located directly across the street from Louisville’s lovely Waterfront Park. We could see the main stage from the balcony, and that made us feel important. But we still had to use the porta-potties, and that kept us from feeling too important.

This was Forecastle’s 9th year of existence, but the very first year the festival has taken place at Waterfront. The park turned out to be the perfect venue for this light-hearted weekend of music, art, and activism, providing a welcome breeze off the water in the daytime and a gorgeous sunset at night. Plus, while it seemed a little weird to have a festival going on under a highway bridge, there’s something to be said for a built-in source of all-day shade, and something even better to be said for the brilliant individual who came up with the idea to position a row of porta-potties right under this all-day shade source. Today we salute you, Mr. Porta-Potty placement picker. Because it’s much easier to go when the horrifying concoction you’re left to hover over hasn’t spent its day caramelizing in the sun. Right?

This festival also had music.

We missed the first day altogether due to the fact that I now have a real job and can’t go gallivanting all over the country on weekdays anymore unless I get time off, which is sad. And my friend’s dad said Widespread Panic was a religious experience. So there’s that.

Saturday began with listening to Modern English from the condo’s balcony—and that was nice. “Melt With You” is always a good way to start your Saturday afternoon. By the time we ambled over to the festival, Ocean Stage, the relatively small grassy basin ironically situated furthest from the water, was already throbbing with electronic music. This was the place where the festival’s most colorful characters could usually be found, and I was wearing my go-to festival ensemble of fairy wings, bubble wand, and an unnecessary quantity of beads and glowsticks, so while I felt a bit judged at the press entrance, I fit right in here. Onstage local DJ Amtrack—flanked by two uncannily identical blondes in stripper gear gyrating like their lives depended on it—spun out an infectious blend of beat-heavy electronica as we danced in the whirl of flailing limbs and flying colors below. Things were off to an excellent start.


We meandered around West Stage, the largest of four (East, West, North, and Ocean—apparently Forecastle functions under the notion that the South has already seceded, and been filled in with water), where the rootsy blues-rock of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals floated out onto the sun-soaked field and into the alcohol tent. There was one of those rather annoying systems in place where you have to go to a separate station to buy non-refundable drink tickets and then trade them in for beer and Maker’s Mark whiskey drinks. My only other logistical complaint was the lack of accessible drinking water—apparently there was a fountain somewhere within the festival grounds, but I never found it, and when you have thousands of people in an enclosed space with temperatures in the mid-90s, $3 Dasanis and empty souvenir water bottles (while a nice touch) don’t cut it.

As we continued to meander, I noted the multitude of non-profit booths, with an overarching environmental theme, stationed around a glistening serpentine art installation sculpted out of recycled plastic bottles. Forecastle is a festival that has not relinquished its philanthropic spirit to the evil clutches of capitalism. On the green grasses of Waterfront park, the activist spirit remains alive and well, and while it’s hard not to be cynical about such efforts in this day and age (especially if you happen to look over the shoulder of the Avatar manning the sustainability booth and see one of those oil tankers chugging down the Ohio River behind him) it feels good to be surrounded by people who care, especially when there’s music involved. And you realize, man, if everybody just quit bitching and treated themselves to a good old-fashioned music festival, the world would be a far better place.

Next up, Cake. I’ve liked Cake for awhile and though the peak of my fandom has passed, I was still hoping for a great show. Alas, speak-singing frontman John McCrea spent far too much time just speaking, trying to engage with the audience by blathering our ears off rather than doing what we, or at least my companions and I, wanted him to do, which was generate music. Maybe, ultimately, this was exactly what Cake was meant to do. Maybe the true fans appreciated it. Maybe I’m just too far gone to appreciate their brand of 90’s geek-rock anymore. But once McCrea started rambling about “which is more powerful in America today, anger or escapism?” and how the party hardy city of Louisville “must get its protein, hells yes” I grew restless. And once he split the audience into sections and started yelling out instructions (“All the girlsssss on the siiiiide, say duuuuude”) I grew irritated. And they didn’t even play “Mahna Mahna.”


So, we wandered into the food area. Here, I was impressed. Not only were the prices extraordinarily fair for a festival, but the options were abundantly varied, uniquely local and absolutely delicious. And they had free samples! In fact, I must announce that Forecastle Music Festival is the current titleholder for my ongoing, unofficial “Best Festival Food” competition, with J. Gumbo’s $6 trifecta of mouth-watering Cajun chicken and veggies served over rice coming in big for the win. Plus they had Coldstone ice cream, only $3.50 a pop! My over-eager friends got stuck with some dried-out chicken on a bun, but that’s because they were impatient, and impatience never pays. Sampling pays. This much I know for sure.


Feeling proud that I had for once made the best food choice of the group, I marched back over to the main stage and settled down contentedly behind one of the many middle-aged, folding-chair-touting contingents stationed on the lawn. In fact, I think this was \the first time in recent memory where I fell outside the median age range at a music festival. Saturday was a day for Gen X, with Cake and DEVO and Smashing Pumpkins providing a nostalgia-ridden journey through the 80s and 90s for those whose tastes went beyond Punky Brewster and Fraggle Rock during that time. I felt uncharacteristically out of the loop at a lot of these shows, not because I wasn’t around when these bands had their heydays, but perhaps because I was, yet didn’t have the deep-seated appreciation for them that the Gen-Xers did.


I have to hand it to Devo though—they’re a pretty spirited bunch of old dudes. And ultimately, their Forecastle performance reflected their latest album, Something For Everybody, which falls into the positive middle ground between death rattle and comeback. It’s more like a last hurrah, but the kind that could go on for a while, as Devo seems determined to ride this wave as long as they can. As their “Song Study” method of fan-driven track selection for the aptly titled album illustrates, second-wave Devo is nothing if not crowd-pleasing. (Apparently they even changed their trademark red bucket hats to blue because, for whatever reason, that’s what their fans preferred.) And considering the band’s strange history, to which many of us teens and 20-somethings may be blind beyond the ubiquitous Totally 80s! compilation regular “Whip It,” that’s something new.


So, while my brethren and I may have been a bit confused and exasperated by the 15-minute sci-fi history digression, and the equally long and a-bit-too-soon-for-comfort Michael Jackson impersonation (at least I think that’s what it was), it’s only because we didn’t know that Devo actually had this whole 1970s-spawned theory of de-evolution derived from some book about humans evolving from mutant, brain-eating apes. And while they’re certainly not trying to make us take it seriously anymore (were they ever?), there’s something to be said for their power of foresight, in hindsight. Looking at our own postmodern world, does de-evolution seem so far-fetched? And regardless, we certainly cannot deny the irreparable influence Devo’s music has had on the today’s deluge of popular electronic music. And for that, I thank them.


Case in point, the next act to take up residence on the West Stage—Bassnectar. Back in the loop and into the fray, my fellow Gen Y-ers and I rushed toward the stage as the sun slipped behind it. Soon, the sky turned black and the glow sticks emerged, blending with the electrifying visuals and pulsing lights onstage as the honorable DJ Lorin Ashton, engulfed in his signature mass of waist-length hair, pumped out face-melting break-beats over a rippling sea of sweaty dancing bodies.


Literally soaked in perspiration and exhausted from a solid 75 minutes of pure adrenaline, we decided to head back to our temporary abode for cold (free) drinks and the opportunity to experience Smashing Pumpkins from the balcony. I will not deny that this was a bit of a cop-out. I’m well aware of the Smashing Pumpkins’ cult following, and I, like most people, do own a copy of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but I’m going to confess something here: I bought it because I was in middle school and it seemed like the cool thing to do for the emerging music connoisseur I imagined myself to be. In fact, beyond admittedly poignant gem “1979,” I never really got that into it. And as I sat out there on that balcony in Louisville looking down at the vaguely defined top of the shimmering West Stage, I kept listening for “1979” but never heard it, not necessarily because they didn’t play it—they must have, right?—but because to be honest we really couldn’t hear very well from up there, and were lingering more on principle than anything else.

Sunday began, of course, with the World Cup final. I cheered for both the Netherlands and Spain, so I feel like I came out a winner. My reward? She & Him, Spoon, and The Flaming Lips, back-to-back on the main stage. I could hardly contain myself. But on the immediate forecast, what I was most excited for was a little band called Greenskeepers, that sing a little song called “Lotion,” based on a little scene from Silence of the Lambs that you may recall. Let me enlighten you with a brief lyrical sample: “The night is very cold, I'm feeling kind of weak/I think i'll make myself a cap from your right buttocks cheek/And then I will go walking with my little dog/and then I'll bury you underneath a log.” Let me continue, with the chorus: “It rubs the lotion on its skin/Or else it get the hose again/Yes, Precious, it gets the hose.” Imagine these lyrics oozing over what may be the catchiest hook of all time, combined with a particularly magical 3-year-old memory of seeing this very band cavorting around the stage in kung fu ensembles at my first-ever music festival (R.I.P. Echo Project) and you can imagine my excitement about seeing Greenskeepers on the Ocean Stage on Sunday.


Now imagine this: madly hustling the more dedicated soccer fans in my group out of a local bar, charging through layers of traffic, elderly bystanders and sustainability pushers and reaching the Ocean Stage just in time to find… what? To my horror, rather than the four vivacious droogs I was expecting, there was a lethargic-looking chubby guy in discomforting skinny jeans mixing dated samples for a nearly empty basin. Not even the two Kubrickian blondes, gyrating rather dolefully behind him, could save this show.


I marched backstage (that’s how deserted it was), and asked the stage crew about the identity of this Greenskeeping imposter. “It’s Greenskeepers, he’s a DJ,” was the grammatically-suspect response. Baffled, I returned to the stage. Had I hallucinated the whole experience 3 years prior? Impossible. This was not my Greenskeepers. This guy was a fraud or a last-minute replacement, or both. After a few minutes of doubtful lingering, I accepted defeat and moved on. It wasn’t until I returned home the next day and did some in-depth internet research that I realized this guy was, in fact, James Curd, one of the 2 originators of the band I loved so well. Oops. But frealz James, toting your lame solo DJ efforts under the name of your infinitely better band is uncool. Especially when you’re not even the vocalist. And why were you mixing up samples of “Paper Planes” when you had “Lotion” to work with?


I guess I’ll never know.


Disappointed, we headed over to the East Stage, where I was pleasantly surprised by effervescent psych-rock newcomers Morning Teleportation, who provided some much-needed musical uplift after the devastation wreaked by the lone Greenskeeper. Morning Teleportation is currently touring as Modest Mouse openers, with their Isaac Brock-produced debut slated to come out soon. I’ll be sure to check that out.


Post-Teleportation, with nearly an hour to kill before She & Him were scheduled to begin, we wandered. Eventually settling in at the Cirque Bezerk tent, we watched a group of powder-faced men jump over and around a wall and two contortionists writhe around like human snakes. A lovely distraction indeed, marred only by the puke-flavored not-so-mint julep Maker’s Mark beverage I made the mistake of ordering. But winners never quit, so I sucked it down and trotted over to the main stage to watch my girl Zooey rock out 50s-style with M. Ward. 


She & Him is one of the most refreshing musical acts I’ve heard in awhile. Zooey Deschanel trills with her own soulful style while returning us to the kind of retro charm that feels familiar even if you weren’t born until 1987. The perfect soundtrack for a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon in the park.


Eventually though, we were ready to return to our beloved Ocean Stage, where the aptly-named Heavyweight Dub Champion ensemble was spinning. Their scorching beats got us dancing again, and we didn’t stop until we left Waterfront Park. What happened in between were the two best shows of the weekend: Spoon and the Flaming Lips.


Volatile, visceral, and utterly on top of their game, Spoon rocked the shit out of us all—it was the third time I’ve seen them in concert and absolutely the best, confirming Spoon’s spot in my hallowed list of top ten favorite bands. There’s just something about their candid lyricism and uniquely infectious sound that really gets to me.  And I find pasty frontman Britt Daniel extremely sexy.

Spoon played an ideal mix of tracks, mostly from their past four albums, including my personal favorite, which I’ve never heard live before, the seductive, idiosyncratic “Stay Don’t Go,” from 2002’s Kill The Moonlight. It lacked a little in the beat-boxing department, but found redemption by subbing in a seriously sweet horn section made up of local Louisville blowers. As the sun set, the sky awash in seashell colors, Spoon reaffirmed everything I love about them, and definitely acquired some new fans as well.



Now, the grand finale. Another band I’ve seen thrice, another top ten favorite, and architects of perhaps the greatest live show I’ve ever witnessed: The Flaming Lips. I think what it comes down to is that the Lips and I love the same things: over-the-top sparkles and lights and colors and madness—in other words, pure, bedazzling spectacle. The way I see it, this is how great music makes me feel, so why shouldn’t it be matched with its visual equivalent? The Flaming Lips’ music, particularly that of their most recent efforts, Embryonic and the startling, slow-burning celebration that is The Flaming Lips (with Stardeath, White Dwarfs and, against all odds, Peaches) covering Dark Side of the Moon, is all about layers and layers of sound and meaning. I witnessed what may have been a one-time-only performance of Dark Side at Bonnaroo and will never as long as I live forget it, but its essence lives on in all Lips performances.



The Flaming Lips revel in swirling textures—sonic, visual, spatial and psychological. They blend cerebra with kitsch, dark with light, solemnity with mirth. But the magic doesn’t come from attaining perfect balance; in fact, sometimes they go completely askew. Wayne starts babbling about legalizing marijuana in the middle of “Any Colour You Like,” keeps doing his old war-protesting bugle number even as we groan and wait for him to get back to the good stuff, comes out in his giant plastic bubble every show regardless of bodily injury. But he’s nothing if not consistent, and he’s consistent because of the joy these little heady indulgences so clearly bring him. You see Wayne with his giant laser hands and know that one day he just said, “Hey, you know what would be sweet? Giant laser hands.” The Flaming Lips perform their hearts out for us because they love doing it. Their magic comes from the ecstatic totality of the experience they create. And ultimately, that’s exactly where the magic of any truly great music festival comes from, too.

Review and Photos by Hilary Cadigan