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Festival Review: Lollapalooza 2010, Grant Park, August 8 – Day 3

Posted on by Paul in Concerts | Leave a comment

X Japan

Chicago – What’s a music festival without a little rain?  Well … it’s a nicer day, for one thing.  Luckily, the rain ended by 1:00 making the rest of the day pleasant and sunny, albeit a bit muddy.  However, being a guy who wants to get the most out of a music festival, I was there bright and early … in the rain. 

The Antlers got the Budweiser stage going for the day.  Having seen them once before at Massey Hall, I wondered beforehand how their lush, moody music would go over in an outdoor festival setting.  Of course it went over perfectly … because of the rain, not in spite of it.  Frontman Peter Silberman put it best: “Thanks for coming out in the rain.  We’re from New York so we’re used to it.  We’re  not really a surf pop band so this is probably better.”  They played to a smallish but rapt audience, some with umbrellas, some without, but even those without didn’t mind getting a little wet.  The Antler’s set led to the only real scheduling mix up of the day.  As they finished playing “Two,” I figured their set must be done as they had like 2 minutes left in their set and The Antlers definitely do not play two minute songs.  As they launched into “Wake,” I thought, “Hmmm… how will this play out?”  They continued to play, going slightly past their set and into that of The Dodos, who were playing the stage right across from them immediately afterwards.  The Dodos, not wanting to lose out on their alotted time, just started playing at the same time.  I’m sure this wasn’t an intentional snub on the part of The Antlers, and for all I know they had to start their set late, but it was a bit of a blemish on an otherwise well organized schedule. 

The Antlers

I wanted to check out The Cribs for one primary reason – to see Johnny Marr play.  Not being overly familiar with them, I figured it would be a good set, but it turned out to be really good.  They won me over with their high energy performance.  Definitely one of the highlights of the day.

The Cribs 

The other big highlight of the day as well as a pleasant surprise was X Japan, a Japanese metal band formed in 1982 who play an interesting mix of power metal, prog, glam metal and old school speed metal.  In other words, they stuck out like a sore thumb on the bill. 

They broke up in 1997 and are currently on a reunion tour.  This was their first ever American show.  I knew very little about the band going in and was a little bummed that they were on opposite Yeasayer, who I really wanted to see, but I figured I can see Yeasayer again and I’m fairly certain I won’t get a chance to see X Japan again.  And what can I say?  This band was glorious.  They pretty much match Lady Gaga and Empire of the Sun for over the top theatricality.  As they entered to some piped in intro music, a small group of dedicated hardcore fans cheered loudly.  Shortly thereafter, many more of us were instantly converted into fans.  My favourite bandmember to watch was drummer Yoshiki, who entered wearing some sort of robe, wore a neckbrace throughout the show, and switched between drums and piano.  He also performed on the 1994 Kiss tribute album Kiss My Ass.  I bought that album on cassette back then and thought, “Who the hell is Yoshiki?”  Now I know.  Rather than say too much about their performance, I’ll just let these videos of their performance do the talking.  “We Are!” “X!”

After X, I figured I’d stay in that vicinity and check out Erykah Badu.  Big mistake.  While I was interested in seeing her and while she sounded good when she finally came out, little did I know that she wouldn’t even grace us with her presence on stage until 15 minutes into her set!  Those 15 minutes were filled first with her DJ playing other people’s music to warm up the crowd (which is fair enough since the Japanese metal that preceded her probably didn’t fit the mood she wanted to create, but still…) and her backup band jamming on some tune for awhile.  Had i known she would take this long, I probably would have gone to check something else out (which I eventually did).  Badu would later reappear onstage with Cypress Hill during their set, and Cypress Hill put on a great show.  Opening strong with “How I Could Just Kill A Man,” they played a mix of old and new songs, including classics like “Insane In The Brain.” “I Wanna Get High.” and “Hits From The Bong,” the performance of which actually involved them taking hits from a bong onstage.  

Cypress Hill

MGMT played just before Cypress Hill at the other end of the park to one of the largest crowds of the day.  While Sarah wasn’t overly impressed with their performance at Coachella, and Ricky echoed those sentiments after seeing their most recent Toronto show, I would have to say that my opinion differs slightly.  Looking a bit like mid ’60s Bob Dylan, Andrew VanWyngarden led the band through a selection of songs from their latest Congratulations, plus a few older tunes.  The songs sounded good, and the band was tight.  I couldn’t see anything wrong with their performance … but I do agree somewhat that it was still a bit of an underwhelming performance for me at least, probably partly because I was looking forward to Cypress Hill, Soundgarden, and Arcade Fire and partly because they weren’t as over the top as X Japan. 

I split the rest of the night between Soundgarden and Arcade Fire.    Both bands delivered solid sets that satisfied for different reasons – Soundgarden primarily as nostalgia.  As I watched them play I had forgotten how heavy songs like “Jesus Christ Pose” and “Gun” sounded.  Sadly, I left to catch the last part of Arcade Fire before they played Black Hole Sun, but there’s a whole bunch of videos of it on youtube anyways, so I guess that’ll do.  Arcade Fire sounded great too, closing out with a few classics like “Rebellion (Lies),” “Keep The Car Running,” and “Wake Up.”  You guys are great,” said Win Butler, clearly impressed with the response he was getting from the crowd.  “Usually at the end of festivals, people are burned out, but you guys must have been pacing yourselves.”  It’s all about moderation I guess.

Soundgarden

Concert Review: MGMT, April 29, Mod Club

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts | 7 Comments

Toronto – Thursday night saw MGMT in town to promote their polarizing sophomore album Congratulations, which was released April 13th, 2010. I’ve listened to this album a few times and was kinda okay with it, but it wasn’t the atrocity some people made it out to be and of course, not the anthem filled album that the debut was. The all ages show at the Mod Club was sold out in minutes, making this night feel like a more intimate affair then it could have been. Having seen MGMT before at V-Fest, I was interested in seeing them in a more smaller venue. I had quite enjoyed their set on the island, but I can’t really remember it. When you go to V-fest with press credentials, you pretty much have an open bar, which means you don’t really remember much of the festival.

First of all, I have to thank my lucky stars my coworker was at the show, I had originally intended to make it to the Mod Club at around 10, anticipating a 10-10:30 start. What do you know, at 8:40, i get a text message:

S: Mgmt on stage, book it over here

which led to this exchange

Me: WTF
S: I think openers didn’t show, 3 songs done already
Me: Where u at
S:On the raised area on the right, all the way at the front
Me:Balcony closest to stage.. Did they play kids
Sno..no kids yet

Interesting! As you can tell by this intimate exchange, I was there to hear their super single Kids, so lets talk about that song

Kids

As you might have guessed, Kids was the last song of the night. It should be, it’s the meal ticket. Unless you go to the Kate Nash Institute for Performing Live Arts, you generally will know to play one of your biggest songs last, to send the crowd home happy. Kids is a wicked song, it’s catchy, got a good melody and very anthemic. I would say most people going to the show were there to hear this song, Electic Feel and Time To Pretend. I can understand playing old songs when you have new cool stuff to play is boring and somewhat of a chore, but I think a band should never forget that they really are just a product and the concert goers are the consumers and it’s really up to the product to deliver. Especially when you are in an industry like the music industry, where competition is stiff and most bands shelf life is short. It’s probably in your best interest to make the most of what you have, when you have it.

So why the little spiel? MGMT could not have looked more bored playing that song. They didn’t even really play it. The background music was basically played from a recording, with all the members basically taking a break from instrument playing duties to sing along to the song. Drummer James Richardson would very occasionally bang the symbols and Ben Goldwasser would occasionally bang the keyboard a bit, but more or less, it was just a MGMT karaoke over their own song. The crowd still lapped it up though, but I thought they were basically taking a piss on their own song, basically saying ‘we know we have to play this song, but we aren’t REALLY going to play it’. Maybe I was the only one who noticed it, but it definitely bothered me a bit.

The rest of the show was stellar otherwise, I kind of like the new material live, it’s got quite a psychedelic late 60s acid/lsd feel to it and it seems to me like a unsurprising direction change from the band. Oracular Spectacular was basically an ode to classic 70s rock, so it should be of no surprise that Congratulations makes nods towards other types of music from the same era. That being said, the overly chatty young pseudo hipster crowd still reacted more favorably to all the classic songs of the debut album. Like Sarah had said in her review of MGMT at Coachella, they had very little stage presence and was pretty disengaged with a crowd, despite saying a host of ‘thank yous’. I guess you can’t expect too much from a bunch of kids thrusted into the spotlight as MGMT was a few years ago.

All in all, it was a decent show. I got in late, somehow got an awesome spot, and then got home early. While I was there, I heard some good tunes and despite the hiccups that was Kids, I still enjoy the set.

Ps. Next time I’m at Mod Club, I promise to take a pic from a different angle

Review: Coachella 2010, Part 2: Surprising Sub-Par Acts

Posted on by sarahw in Concerts | 3 Comments

Palm Springs – Continued from part 1

Surprisingly Sub Par Acts

One: MGMT

After that love-fest, let’s move onto the bands that left a bad taste in my mouth. First up is MGMT, their debut album, Oracular Spectacular, was repeated on my iPod for ages when it first came out. Amazing from start to finish. Their second album, Congratulations was a departure from their indie rock smash hit, a little more disjointed and psychedelic and took a lot of listens to begin to grow on me. Regardless I was pretty psyched to see them live, they arrived on stage and announced that they would play all the songs from their new album, okay fine, it just came out. They played about 3 or 4 songs from their new album which no one really knew and were underwhelming live to say the least. These guys just have no stage presence, their vocals are weak and they make no effort to involve the audience. They finally got to songs like Kids and Time to Pretend, however, still with no audience interaction, fine, you’re still pretty inexperienced. The kicker for me is at one point between songs, they actually had the audacity to ask the audience to buy their new album. Come on guys, many bands at Coachella just dropped new albums and not one of them shamelessly promoted themselves. Live tours are how you promote an album and it helps when you show audience appreciation and actually have some presence on stage. I may buy their future albums, yes, but will I ever attend another MGMT show? Definitely not.

Two: Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend tunes are always a regular in the summer, an indie band made up of rich white dudes playing catchy Californian pop songs that have a somewhat African edge. Both Vampire Weekend albums are great, start to finish. As you can probably tell I’m big on the stage presence and these guys just don’t have it. They played all their hits, but the crowd and myself were not moving, at all. I saw some head bops but they didn’t really get things going, their performance was basically boring.

Three: Pavement

Pavement, what can I say, didn’t like them before Coachella, tried to open my mind and see what all the reunion buzz was about so I caught some of their set. Still don’t get it. Not a fan.