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

The Black Keys - Brothers (5/18/10)

I drove around in my car listening to the Black Keys’ Brothers for weeks before I even started trying to nail down exactly what about it makes me feel so good. I played it for all my friends and even sat down with them for an unprecedented length of highly-focused discussion. Not one person could find anything negative to say about this album. As one friend declared, “listening to these songs makes me feel cooler than I actually am.” I probably can’t sum it up much better than that, but I’ll give it a try.

Unlike a lot of bands that start out rock and end up pop, the Black Keys remain loyal to their sound, sculpting it into a masterpiece just as alluring as it is timeless. Brothers is a progression rather than a departure from Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney’s rock-solid trajectory. Deeply textured by the vast sum of knowledge and ability they possess, the duo harvests divergent genres with the greatest of ease. Here we have quintessential rock and roll effortlessly adorned with the woeful slide of blues, the layered distortions of psychedelia, the raw intensity of punk and even the hard-hitting groove of funk.

From the very first listen I fell into this album like a featherbed, lulled into a contented state of sonic bliss usually reserved for the kinds of bands distinguished enough to require only single word identification (Stones, Dead, Zeppelin…you get the idea). Yet the more I listened, the more I realized how brightly each individual track shines. The quality of this album as a whole is a result of its excellent parts.

The brilliance begins with “Everlasting Light,” the coolest straight-up love song I have ever heard, layering Auerbach’s scratchy falsetto and just a touch of tambourine over the kind of immortal strut that makes it impossible not to bob your head. But then, just when you are feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, here comes “Next Girl” with the bitten declaration “my next girl/will be nothing like my ex-girl/I made mistakes back then/I’ll never do it again.” It seems, somewhere in the space between tracks, the everlasting light has gone out. For Auerbach, we come to learn, love is not everlasting; it is messy and unfair and destructive and cruel. He is “bound to fall,” as he laments in the album’s winning single “Tighten Up” amidst sexy guitar riffs and a deliciously breezy backbeat. And fall he does.

Here is the human experience, from the yearning of “Howlin’ For You” to the loss of “She’s Long Gone” to the haunting realization of “Too Afraid to Love You,” in which Auerbach sings “I wish loneliness would leave me/but I think its here to stay” as soulfully as Roy Orbison might. Brothers progresses in fits and bursts, sailing over this rocky terrain with sweltering passion and relentless lucidity, sucking you into its jagged dimensions as they shift and shrink and swell.

Sometimes the demon, sometimes the victim, sometimes the frightened child, Auerbach covers a full range of emotions in a way both decidedly masculine and insistently nonexclusive. He understands the flawed and maddening cycle of the human condition, the mistakes we recognize and learn from but can’t stop making no matter how determined or self-assured we may be. “I am the bluest of blues/Every day a different way to lose,” he howls in “The Go Getter,” a rueful lament bringing to mind not only the classic blues of Muddy Waters but also, more specifically, the desolate languor of Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher.”

“Never Give You Up,” functions as the penultimate love song for the undeserving lover, paired with a sweet-as-sugar guitar riff that sounds almost wedding-like, and provides a worthy transition into the album’s final track, a ballad that reaches no real resolution but finds a kind of deprecatory sense of peace in acceptance. In essence, what it’s like to be human. “These Days” is not another cover of the inveterate Jackson Browne/Nico song of the same title, but its tone resembles the original’s melancholy self-reflection and provides a final tip of the hat to all the influential predecessors that made Brothers possible.

Clearly, to say I am obsessed with this album would be an understatement, but I’ve waxed poetic enough for one review, so I’ll wrap things up with one final analogy. Ready? Okay. Like a classic car with a brand new engine, the Black Keys are nostalgic, functional, and utterly badass. And they have the power to move you.

By Hilary Cadigan

Ultra Music Festival 2010 Review

Ultra Music Festival: a two-day extravaganza made up almost entirely of Electronic Dance Music.  Take a moment and think about that, two days—20 hours total—of dancing. And I’m not talking about your grandma’s foxtrot here, people, nor am I referring to the typical head-bobbing concert fare of yore.  I speak of sweaty, fist-pumping, hip-shaking, foot-stomping, neck-dislocating, all-out absurdity.  To be sure, one does not and should not come to Ultra unless they are ready to get extreme.

Unlike more typical music festivals (and I use the word typical very loosely here), the Ultra lineup does not cater to the general music-loving public.  Rather, it is very specific in its aim, and that aim is EDM. Ultra-goers came in all kinds of kooky outfits, from rainbow tutus to Green-Man-inspired bodysuits to banana costumes.   Anything neon or glowing was the norm.  The clientele bore a refreshing lack of pretension—there were the usual groups of friendly festie folks, crunchy kids, electro nuts, clubbers, ravers, rollers, and even a ferociously fist-pumping but otherwise harmless faction of guidos, but everyone seemed strangely at peace with each other.  Such is the magic of truly successful festivals, which Ultra certainly embodied, despite the lack of onsite camping.  I used to think that only living together as a temporary community could establish the kind of widespread camaraderie I found at festivals like Bonnaroo and Echo Project, but Ultra proved me wrong.  Sure we all went home to our respective homes, hotels, motels, couches or cars at the end of the day, but while we were there, it was all about the music and the sense of social cohesion it brings. No matter who we might’ve been individually, together we were all the kind of people who’d actually pay to subject ourselves to a 2-day marathon of nonstop bass lines and booty shaking, and there’s definitely a sense of solidarity in that.  Here’s my attempt at sharing that solidarity with you: a play-by-play account of my Ultra 2010 Experience.

FRIDAY:

Due to the combined forces of rush hour gridlock, a long wait at the press tent, an inexplicably early set time, and the potentially ill-advised decision to run all the way back up ten flights of hotel stairs to retrieve my collection of glowsticks, I tragically and shamefully missed the show I was most looking forward to: Pretty Lights.  As such, my Ultra arrival was slightly marred by frustration, but as I crossed into Bicentennial’s electronic wonderland of sound, I was able to recover pretty quickly and start focusing on what was yet to come. Entering to the right of the main stage, my friend and I were immediately enveloped in Passion Pit’s giddy crowd-pleaser “Better Things,” but determined to check out the scene, we managed to tear ourselves away from Michael Angelakos’ dizzying falsetto to take a look around. 

Directly in front of the rather sparsely populated main stage, the Ibiza Arena was already packed to the brim with punctual festivalgoers pumping along to the pulsations of DJ Laidback Luke.  It was overwhelming at first.  We dithered from one stage to the other, trying to assemble our troops (already scattered throughout the festival due to the separate entrances for general admission, will call, and press) and unsure of where or how to start our musical voyage before finally plunging into the Ibiza tent as Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am took the stage. 

Let me be clear: I despise the Black Eyed Peas.  Just looking at Fergie makes me want to punch a baby in the face. However, due to the welcome exclusion of Peas abominations like “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Will.i.am’s set quickly developed into a high-energy albeit rather typical affair of samples and remixes, including a “Don’t Stop Believing”/“Sweet Child O’ Mine”/“Thriller” sequence that got the crowd riled up enough to start climbing the suspension poles.  Pole-climbing became a common occurrence throughout the festival, and as each daring idiot clambered up and beamed down at the crowd as though he were the first person in history to reach such clever heights, I was actually reminded of how much I appreciate the lasseiz-faire nature of these types of events.  At Ultra, you don’t get punished for doing something stupid like climbing up a pole. If you fall, it’s your own damn fault.  The same goes for drugs; yes, drug-culture thrives at Ultra, but it’s by no means unavoidable or even all that perceptible for those who aren’t interested in it. Ultimately the choice of whether or not to take part is completely up to the individual—at Ultra, and other events like it, you can do and be whatever and whoever and however you want to be amidst a community virtually void of judgment.  It carves out a unique time and place of jubilant anarchy, where the typical and often arbitrary rules and taboos of society go out the window, and the crazy kids get to come out and play without fear, rediscovering a rare sense of human continuity all but lost in the tightly controlled system we live in today.

Anyway, my friends and I ducked out of Will.i.am’s set early to grab some soggy/overpriced festival food and then headed over to London dance duo Groove Armada’s scheduled live performance on the Main Stage.  But wait, this isn’t… who is this?  It was LMFAO, inexplicably coming on early and punishing our ears with a worse-than-usual rendition of “I’m In Miami Bitch” (this phrase became a kind of all-too-obvious theme for the festival, sampled in several other sets and plastered in Day-Glo on what appears to be this year’s most popular tourist t-shirt). The performance carried on exactly as you might expect from the people responsible for the Jersey Shore theme song as well as every other miserably catchy vocal hook on the frat party circuit these days (personal favorite: “SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! SHA-SHA-SHA-SHOTS!”).

When they finally emerged, electro-pop outfit Groove Armada provided a welcome reprieve from the off-key assclownery and a healthy dose of estrogen amidst all the male energy dominating Ultra’s stages.  While Tom Findlay and Andy Cato have been grooving since the mid-90s, their most recent album, this year’s Black Light, debuted fearless female vocalist Saintsaviour, who carried the performance, marching onto the stage in a suit of sparkly armor and rocking out like some kind of alien empress.

We left Armada heading vaguely in the direction of Infected Mushroom, until I suddenly heard some seriously sick beats coming from the direction of what would soon prove to be my favorite area of the festival—the comparatively small but ideally situated Biscayne Stage, stationed in the very corner of the park and framed by a cluster of skyscrapers and what appeared to be Miami’s mini monorail track.  Plunging into the smallish crowd gathered in front of the stage, we were immediately sucked into the spellbinding throb of a DJ none of us had ever heard of before—Fake Blood aka DJ Touché. Remixing samples from Little Boots’ “Stuck on Repeat” and The Kills’ “Cheap and Cheerful,” along with original tracks such as “I Think I Like It,” Fake Blood expertly blended fidgety synth stabs and pitched-up vocal bits built to the brink of torment before surrendering to pounding baselines that got the whole crowd jumping.  It turned out to be one of my favorite sets of the weekend.

Due to the utter overabundance of Ultra’s lineup (given the chance I’d see every single act individually, but that would take months), we’d typically stick around for a few songs of each set and then look at our tattered pamphlets and sprint over to the next stage to check out a new scene.  We spent the 9:00-10:00 slot flip-flopping between two masters of house music: David Guetta and Kaskade.  French DJ Guetta is a perennial favorite of the club scene with boatloads of mainstream appeal, probably due to collaborations with radio rappers Kid Cudi, Akon, and Will.i.am (the latter, not unexpectedly, stuck around for a guest appearance on Guetta’s stage).  Guetta put on a show that revolved just as much if not more around visual spectacle as it did around music: the first in a series of late-night Main Stage headliners featuring mind-blowing collaborations of colored lights, long-range lasers, multi-screen visuals, and massive flame-throwers that sent waves of heat all the way to the very back of the crowd.  Kaskade, on the other hand, while certainly not lacking in the lights and lasers department, spun out dreamy pulsations that could’ve retained their allure in a cement prison cell. 

After working up a sweat in Kaskade’s tent, my crew and I decided to settle down for a welcome period of relaxed listening on a grassy hill next to one of the majestic white Heineken domes in the center of the park.  From there we watched as the masses gathered around Main Stage for the highly anticipated Tiësto set that would close out the evening. While just as danceable as that of Guetta or Kaskade, Netherlands-born DJ Tiësto’s music is rooted in trance, and despite the progressive nature of his eclectic samplings and collaborations, his mesmerizing ability to put audiences into a mobile yet trance-like state is worth mentioning.  Tiësto’s set got better as it went on, and eventually had us off the grass and into the fray, dancing wildly to the symphonic percolations of “Adagio For Strings” and the chill-inducing splendor of tranced-out Tegan and Sara collaboration “Feel It In My Bones.”  The two guys gallivanting around the stage in stilts and full-body light-up suits with guns that emitted billowing clouds of fog just added to the surrealism of the whole affair. 

SATURDAY:

Day 2 began at noon, another sunny portrait of meteorological perfection.  We arrived at Bicentennial to find a sold-out venue—apparently the 100,000-person capacity had actually been reached.  Scalpers were selling Saturday-only tickets for up to $400 (originally a 2-day pass cost only $140). Planning ahead never felt so good.

Our first stop of the day was Diplo at the Bayfront Live Stage.  One half of Major Lazer, which had a separate set later in the day, Diplo aka Wesley Pentz is clearly a man who knows his craft.  Dressed in a Major Lazer t-shirt, the unflappable Pentz mixed and mashed a variety of different samples and syncopations, including the absurdly infectious hook from Lazer’s “Pon de Floor,” while infusing it all with his characteristically bouncy Floridian vibes. 

Post-Diplo, in the process of mobilizing for the Damian Marley/Nas set over at Main Stage, I was suddenly struck motionless as the opening vocals of a very special song came blaring over DJ Steve Aoki’s speakers: it was “Circle of Life,” as in that marvelous opening song from The Lion King where Rafiki holds baby Simba up in the sky at the tip of Pride Rock and all the lions cheer (I was thus inspired to look up the lyrics—apparently they are “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba, sithi uhhmm ingonyama” which means “There comes a lion, oh yes, it’s a lion.” You learn something new every day). The Circle continued with a charming remix stratified with jungle beats that had the crowd going wild, but my troops were on a Marley mission, so I had to bid farewell just as the Kid Millionaire was launching into a spontaneous head-banging dance and screaming in a sinister way over what must have been a pre-mixed track.  Ah well, a good time to move on.

At the Marley/Nas show, I was most delighted to find that the unrelenting flag-waver I remembered from Damian’s concert circa 2007 was still waving in full force.  If you’ve ever seen a Damian Marley performance, you know what I’m talking about, and if not, you should, because it is awesome. Marley’s affable mix of Jamaican charm and scintillating rhymes effortlessly arranged over reggae/hip-hop harmonies is the perfect soundtrack for a sunny day in Miami.  Nas’ hard-hitting urban eloquence adds another pleasing layer to the Marley marvel—the comrades’ musical and cultural solidarity shined brightly throughout their performance, inciting further anticipation for their long-awaited collaborative album Distant Relatives, due for release later this month.

The next stop of our meandering musical journey was the tiny Day-Glo Arena, which advertised the world’s largest paint party.  Clearly, I needed to get involved.  We spent the next half hour dancing madly to the house beats of various smaller-name DJs as armed performers in plasticine suits sprayed us with neon paint.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Once we were thoroughly doused in Day-Glo, we headed back over to the main stage to check out neo-electro dance DJ Benny Benassi, where it was easy to see why Benassi is such a sensation.  The epileptic revelry of throbbing beats and screeching synthesizers—particularly in hit single “Satisfaction,” with its “Fitter Happier”-inspired computer voiceovers—really epitomized Ultra’s overall atmosphere.

I spent the next few hours over at my beloved Biscayne stage, where a series of back-to-back dubstep sets was already in full-force. A London-based offshoot of U.K. garage that employs elements of drum'n'bass, techno, and dub, dubstep has a kind of dark but thrilling intensity that really cuts to the heart of EDM greatness.  The line-up progressed from Benga to Caspa to Glitch Mob to Skream! to Rusko, and while I tended to drift in and out of these performances, there was something special about the cohesion of the crowds that gathered for these sets.  From the hill next to the stage, I had a perfect view of all the tightly packed bodies jumping in unison with their hands in the air as the Miami sun began to set, flooding the sky with rose gold. 

Next on the Main Stage was progressive trance DJ Armin Van Buuren, another Netherlands native with worldwide acclaim whose sprawling compositions and breathtaking lightshow seamlessly carried the frenzied masses from day to night.  Van Buuren and Tiësto share a number of similarities, and collaborated in the past with the hit “Eternity.”

Soon it was back to Biscayne for more back-to-back goodness.  First up, Bassnectar, self-described as “A free-form project that merges music, art, new media, social involvement, and community values; dedicated to a constantly evolving ethos of collaborative creation, self reinvention, and boundary-pushing experimentation."  That statement may contain some bullshit, but with his trademark waist-length dreads and exuberant head bobbing, Bassnectar is a force to be reckoned with and a personal favorite of mine.  His quirky mix of tripped-out ambience and hard-rocking techno beats stands out even in this sea of other talented electronic music-makers.

Ultra’s quick turnaround between artists was both consistent and admirable. Accordingly, as soon as Bassnectar shuffled off the stage, a bunch of new people jumped on.  This motley crew of costumed dancers came to start the all-out dance party featured on Major Lazer’s set.  This newly established digital reggae/dancehall project has received much critical acclaim and indie cred since the Summer 2009 release of Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do.  The innovation of DJs Diplo and Switch, Major Lazer features Gorillaz-esque cartoon characters complete with an absurd back-story (something involving limbs lost in the secret Zombie War of 1984), and mixes a range of Jamaican musical elements with tight beats, catchy refrains, and a slew of guest vocalists, from Santigold to Mr. Lexxx.  Their set was a paradigm of pure fun, with vocalist Skerrit Bwoy and a troop of female dancers infusing an extra layer of personality. Oh, and the snappy hook featured in “Pon de Floor” is still stuck in my head.

Finally, yet all too soon, we entered Ultra’s final hour: Deadmau5, Paul Oakenfold, Ghostland Observatory, and Carl Cox were all performing at the same time on different stages.  Tough decisions had to be made.  I started out with Deadmau5 on Main Stage, where the entire area was so packed that oxygen seemed like a luxury.  So, I took the lack of oxygen and the Mau5’s underwhelming intro as an excuse to round out my trifecta of Ghostland Observatory experiences and headed over to the far more breathable Bayfront Live Stage at the other end of the park.

Ghostland did not disappoint.  While their set seemed suspiciously brief (no sign of “Silver City,” a personal favorite), roguish frontman Aaron Behrens lived up to his Freddy Mercury/Prince associations as he shrieked and gyrated amidst the smoky technicolor of a laser light show spectacular enough to rival those featured on much larger and infinitely more populated stages.  The layered perfection of thumping bass, crunchy guitar riffs, and silky synth hooks featured in “Midnight Voyage” extended into a full-on electro-jam session, held down by producer/drummer/synther Thomas Turner in his requisite floor-length cape ensemble.  Ghostland’s vivacious performance was a perfect amalgamation of all the various subgenres that Ultra promotes, and a preview of the places EDM can and will go as it continues to develop.  In other words, a perfect way to end an incredible weekend.

Review & Photos by Hilary Cadigan