All Points West Day 3: 8/2/09

Day three we were back to All Points Wet, with lightning warnings so bad they didn’t let people in until four. That meant Steel Train, Kitty Daisy and Lewis and my personal faves the Gaslight Anthem were all cut. Disappointing for many, but the remaining sets made up for it.

I should note that I’ve already written a review in a best/worst format of day three that you can read over at SPIN.com.

The first act to get going once the gates were opened was PT Walkley. Unfortunately he went on right as the gates were opened, meaning no one had made it to the stage yet. The few of us press folks who had been let in early watched him glumly play his set in front of a nonexistent audience. The tunes were chirpy with “la la la”s aplenty which only made the depressed delivery even sadder. The fest’s organizers gave him the boot after two songs anyway.

By the time Akron/Family got onstage the fans had arrived. They began an inane “We like fun” chant that the audience thankfully had the class to ignore before going into a forty-five minute set that made me think they actually had a strong distaste for fun. Or at least a bizarre understanding of the term. Endless drum-circle jamming rivaled some deaf-pan-flute squalls from the four-piece horn section. Half the set sounded like the band was tuning different notes simultaneously, until they would spontaneously drop their instruments and being some faux-Native American chanting or attempted rhythmic clapping. Only the most stoned enjoyed the tom-tom solos and ambient-tuning blares. Maybe this set would have destroyed at Bonnaroo, but here it just hurt.

Hopefully Akron/Family stuck around to catch We Are Scientists, a band that shows you what fun really is without feeling the need to chant about it. The skinny jeans and hair flourishes would be hipster if the band wasn’t having such a blast, twirling and jerking around onstage as they ran through one hook-laden rock tune after another. “Let’s See It” into “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt” into “The Scene Is Dead,” and that’s just the first ten minutes. Unfortunately their renowned stage banter was at a minimum due to the new time constraints, but their energy never flagged. The same couldn’t quite be said for the audience, who put forward a decent attempt at jumping around, but was ultimately succumbed to the heat. The best they could do was throw dirt at each other. I guess that’s what has to pass for enthusiasm in this weather.

Over on the main stage, Echo and the Bunnymen seemed to think themselves far more popular than they are. A lazy, energy-less performance can come across masterful if the audience has enough nostalgia, but in this crowd few seemed to know or care who these sullen middle-aged men were. “Lips Like Sugar” opened the set and from then on the only energy shown onstage was Ian McCullogh berating the stage crew for god knows what. The man may have lips like sugar, but he has a mouth like molasses. Even a “Walk on the Wild Side” cover fell flat. Most people seemed only there to secure a good spot for Coldplay, and Echo and co. didn’t try very hard to win them over.

The Black Keys, however, are crowd-pleasers. Whether that appreciation was expressed in jumping, clapping, or mud-wrestling, the fans were into the show. Guitar wild man Dan Auerbach showed himself to a more controlled Jack White, busting out loud bluesy riffs while Patrick Carney pounded the drums so hard he broke through his snare at one point (and splintered countless sticks). Blues rock like a louder ZZ Top has rarely been more satisfying.

Coldplay came on the main stage with sparklers, candles, and a rapturous crowd. Given that far more hipster-cool band MGMT was playing on the other stage, those who stuck around for Chris Martin and co. were dedicated. The foursome’s military jackets seemed an attempt to compete with their lights and lasers for the crowd’s attention, but they needn’t have worried. Playing like the seasoned pros they are, these four are master showman, cherry-picking the fastest songs from their often mellow catalogue to get fans moving. Martin joked that the half the audience was just guys dragged by their girlfriends and, while he may have been right, these sing-along rockers proved sure to win over the most uncomfortable boyfriend.

They kicked things into high gear straight off with a pair from their latest album, “Life in Technicolor” and “Violet Hill.” From there one hit followed the next, each performed with a passion that made even the most nauseating tracks like “Yellow” (“Look at the stars, look how they shine for you”) come alive (the latter aided by giant yellow balloons that bounced through the audience). The newer songs got sing alongs just as loud as the old – I guess selling eight million copies of your latest will do that.

Hits may have abounded, but that didn’t mean the band didn’t have a few surprises up their cuffed-and-tassled sleeves. Coming out onto a small platform in the middle of the crowd, the band performed “God Put a Smile On Your Face” and “Talk” before leaving Chris Martin alone with the piano. He sat down and began a slow, somber minor-key intro. “Here comes the sentimentality,” I whispered to my friend. Then Martin slowly began to sing: “You wake up late for school, man you don't wanna go /
You ask your mom please but she still says no.” It took the audience a minute to realize what was happening, but slowly gasps and cheers swept the stage. Martin didn’t crack a smile though, slowly one-upping Jay-Z with his somber “Fight For Your Right to Party” cover in honor of the injured Beastie Boys (video here). Some younger fans may not have known what was happening, but for the rest of us it was an inspired moment that proved both that Coldplay is not too big to pay special attention to an individual audience and that they have a real sense of humor.

Later they cemented both impressions with another unexpected cover, a full band acoustic “Billie Jean” on a second platform, this one halfway out in the field (video here). “We have infinitely more respect for you guys now that we’ve had to walk through that shit,” Martin quipped of their mud-filled trek to get there. Busting out a harmonica for some shockingly competent blues riffing he let drummer Will Champion croon just-released track “Death Will Never Conquer.”

In all honesty though, the entire show was really just leading up to one moment and everyone knew it: “Viva La Vida.” The biggest song of Coldplay’s career, the biggest song of 2008, it doesn’t get much bigger. And to everyone who says it’s played out, the thousands of people in the Liberty State Park fields Sunday night apparently hadn’t gotten the memo (video here). Crowd excitement seemed matched only by band enthusiasm, Champion pounding away on his front-stage floor toms while Martin leapt, walked, and crawled around the stage trying to let his voice above the crowds sing-along roar. Coldplay could have truly half-assed this one and gotten a great response, and after playing it to death for over a year you wouldn’t blame them if they did. The passion they put into a song they know damn well they’ll be playing the rest of their life was, in the end, the final testament to their unexpectedly inspired stage show. I was one of those guys Chris joked about, only there because a girl dragged me along. Well, Chris, count me a convert.

Photos by Tim Griffin and Chris La Putt (via BrooklynVegan)

All Points West Day 2: 8/1/09

Day two of All Points West brought one welcome addition: sun. Not enough to dry up the mountains of mud of course, but enough so that the experience could be pleasant from the knees up. Against all odds, the good weather lasted the entire day, allowing for the kind of roaming musical exploration for which festivals were made.

First up was alt-indie rockers …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead. From their aggressively melodic instrumental opening through the finale where singer/guitarist/drummer Jason Reece leapt off the stage and roamed singing through the masses the crowd was enraptured with every noise crescendo and short blast of feedback. The band got so into their emo-hardcore that everything onstage that couldn’t get out of the way took a beating. As a solo piano number picked up speed Conrad Keely hit the keys so hard the keyboard collapsed. A drum kit later suffered the same fate, as did a large stack of amps that almost landed on a stage tech.

With the passion the band played with though, they may not have noticed. The duel drum setup propelled the thrashing suites through their rhythmic changes. Songs like “Isis Unveiled” featured lengthy instrumental breaks characterized by Keely’s serpentine guitar lines and Jay Phillip’s crushing bass bombardments. After fifty minutes the audience still seemed generally alive, but the band certainly did leave a trail of stunned in their wake.

The auxiliary stage energy continued with Electric Touch, a group of four rock’n’roll revivalists with strut of the Hives and the sneer of Mick Jagger. Singer Shane Lawlor prowled the stage like a feral cat, daring the audience to call him derivative. Closing the set with a pair of Ramones covers – “Do You Want to Dance” (a cover of a cover) and “Blitzkrieg Bop” – didn’t get the crowd jumping like they should have, but showed that these boys know where they came from and are proud to wear their influences on their ripped-leather sleeves.

Over on the main stage the Cool Kids were generating far less excitement. They ran through all their hipster hip-hop hits, but even chant-along jams like “I Rock” and “Basement Party” failed to elicit much of a response. The crowd would cheer every tune’s intro as they recognized the song, and then quickly fall silent as the Kids delivered another half-hearted rendition. The stage looked pathetically empty with only the two of them and a DJ and they walked around it like an obligation. Even their frequent encouragements of participation seemed limp. The only excitement of the set came with the addition of a guest MC, who ran around stage yelling incoherently like a homeless guy on the subway. When a crazy hobo upstages you, bad sign.

Kool Keith put on a far more successful rap show for one reason: Ice-T. No one could quite explain the washed-up rapper’s presence onstage, nor did they try. Billing himself as “the most expensive hype man alive” (a claim Flava Flav might dispute), Ice mostly bopped along on the side, occasionally throwing in a line or two. He threw down song “real gangster” verses, but no one paid much attention to his actual performance. The novelty of seeing Ice-T was enough.

Keith and his two-man crew provided high entertainment value all their own, roaming the stage in capes and head scarves dropping rhymes that sounded more like the injured-list Beastie Boys than any of the acts paying tribute to them. “We don’t stop!” they frequently informed the crowd (stopping to do so). And whether people were truly into the music or merely the novelty, no one wanted them to.

The energy continued to be relegated to stage two though, as the Arctic Monkeys packed show on the main stage featured a lot of blank stares as the much-hyped quartet did…not much. The press-adored British brats seemed generally too impressed with themselves to pay he audience much heed, running through by-the-numbers renditions of their hits that somehow rendered even their brand of hyper-catchy dance rock boring. Even the new songs off their upcoming Humbug (including one, “The Cornerstone,” never played live before) came off jaded, like the Cars busting out “Just What I Needed” one more time. Perhaps the new manes of hair they sported made movement impossible or perhaps jetlag was taking its toll, but on this side of the pond we’re not quite as enamored with this group as the Brits and such tired performances won’t fix that.

All this may have been Gogol Bordello’s fault. Maybe they suck the energy from everyone around them death-eater style. Otherwise I cannot explain the excitement of each and every performance these gypsy punks put on. My fourth time seeing them was just about like my previous three. The setlist hadn’t changed much, but neither had the energy, making the umpteenth “Start Wearing Purple” and “Wonderlust King” destroy the crowd as expected. In only fifty minutes Eugene Hütz commanded his army of misfits in a medley of Eastern Europe yell-alongs while he poured red wine on himself, beat the hell out of a metal bucket or broke his guitar in turns. They’re the perfect festival band, and if they never change a thing the show still won’t get old.

The sweat-soaked crowd left Gogol panting, longing for the cool respite of Neko Case’s alt-country. Her crystalline singing pumped energy into the slow folk tunes as the sun set behind her. One can only imagine how nice lying on the grass taking in the scene would have been if, oh yeah, we weren’t still in a festering mud pool.

My Bloody Valentine really should have been paired more closely with Trail of Dead as they’re the only two bands remotely complementary to each other. Where Trail of Dead lays their fury in the hardcore riffage though, My Bloody Valentine expresses it in passive-aggressive waves of noise. Kevin Shields sullenly led the famed shoegaze quartet onstage, launching into swirls of sound that made bones rattle as the band played humbly onstage. As low-key a group of live performers as exists, the incredible stillness of the members onstage provides the perfect contrast to the pure volume. If they look like they’re about to fall asleep (as they always do), where is all that racket coming from? To give the crowd some visual stimulation psychedelic background videos accompanied each song, blurry colors floating on the giant screen as the reverb continued its onslaught.

Vocals have never been a major part of the Bloody Valentine sound, being just another instrument in the mix on their albums. However at least there they are in the mix; live they were completely inaudible. Playing absurdly loud is fine, guys, but make everything loud. The perfect balance of their classic Loveless is lost when the whammied guitars take over.

At all Valentine concerts earplugs are handed to the crowd and the brave few who made it thus far plug-less relented under the onslaught of “You Made Me Realize.” This traditional set-closer has reached legendary status among concert-goers, a fifteen-minute barrage of noise that makes the preceding hour seem tame. Vocals? Gone. Melody? Gone. Chord changes? Gone. The real instrument now was volume, and these guys are virtuosos. As the distorted reverb grew to ever more ear-bleeding level it became a religious experience, heaven for some, hell for others. Half the crowd was throwing the band the devil horns, the other half giving them the finger. If that doesn’t mean they’re doing something right, I don’t know what does.

In a way that fuck-you attitude proved an apt introduction for Tool, who channel their angst in slightly more crowd-pleasing ways. The army of Tool heads was as strong as at Bonnaroo two years ago, taking no prisoners in their drive to attain prime viewing position. Not that it mattered; lead singer Maynard James Keenan stage in the rear of the stage the entire show, throwing up robotic silhouettes as he warbles his tripped-out lyrics over the band’s prog-metal blasts. Videos of fire and explosions continued from all corners, lights and lasers flashing around creating a show visually fascinating if aurally a little painful. Tool is clearly an acquired taste though, and once a music fan get the itch nothing satisfies like Tool Time.

All Points West Day 1: 7/31/09

Thus begin the first day of All Points West, hereafter known as Mudstock ’09. Much has been made of the curse of the New York music festival and this one, only in its second year, didn’t have a promising start. A steady rain fell all afternoon, quickly turning the grassy field into a mud pit from which there could be no recovery. The views of the skyline and Statue of Liberty from Liberty State Park are magnificent, but looking through them while ankle-deep in sewage dulls the appeal.

Nevertheless, the music soldiered on. First up was indie heroes The National, playing for a small but devoted crowd of raincoat-clad followers leaning on every word of Matt Berninger’s famed baritone to provide shelter from the storm. The five-piece focused largely on songs from their highly acclaimed albums Boxer and Alligator, eliciting elated cries upon the opening notes of “Fake Empire” and “Squalor Victoria.” Berninger swayed around the stage while the band gently recreated the songs’ layers behind him, exuding focus if not energy. The crowd was rarely acknowledged until the finale of “Mr. November” when Berninger joined us in drenched solidarity, climbing into the packed pit to deliver the closing verses. This isn’t a band that blows minds live, but distracting a cold and wet crowd from their misery for fifty minutes is no small feat.

The fest had two stages and one tent, but the tent was set so far away from everything else few realized that an opportunity to watch live music out of the rain existed. Those who did drifted towards Carolina Liar’s southern rock jams, tight tunes packing boozy hooks like early Kings of Leon. Vocalist Chad Wolf (great Lynyrd Skynyrd-ey name there) tried his best to keep a bedraggled crowd focused, leading the audience in half-hearted fist-pumping. Keyboard player Johan Carlsson provided the best reason to pay attention though, looking wholly out of place rocking one hand per keyboard like a lost member of Duran Duran. His blond mane waved as he nodded his head, eyes closed in ‘80s solo style so much I was tempted to yell a request for “The Final Countdown.” The rest of the band paid him little attention though, and the music took just as little heed.

Up next was DJ and Adult Swim composer Flying Lotus. The first visually-inclined act of the day, he mixed video collages to match his beats, colors and shapes morphing like a way-advanced iTunes visualizer. Given that the wet afternoon atmosphere was no place for a dance party, the images gave the crowd something to focus on while listening to the music.

The rain began to abate as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs conjured a storm of their own. The three-piece melded garage-punk with new wave, guitarist Nick Zinner thrashing around behind his jagged riffs as Brian Chase snapped out drum machine-precision beats and Karen O swayed, swooned and stalked around the stage. All of this happened, incidentally, in front of a giant eyeball. Tracks from their most recent It’s Blitz dominated the set, but the crowd response to new songs like “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll” confirmed they were already band classics. Karen’s forest-nymph ramblings did nothing to kill the momentum and her inexplicable cowering under a knit blanket for several songs only added an air of mystery. Like all great frontwomen, you’re never sure if she’s incredibly theatrical or moderately psychotic (probably both), but you can’t look away.

The big news before the weekend even began was the Beastie Boys’ surprise cancellation of this and all other dates due to MCA’s (thankfully treatable) cancer. Where Lollapalooza bunted with the Yeahs as their replacement headliner – a band that, while excellent, has not achieved a level of popularity to deserve the honor – All Points West knocked it out of the park by booking a last-minute Jay-Z. In current popular culture at least, Jay is arguably an even bigger name than the Beasties, so few missed the brat rappers.

Always the gentleman though, Jay did not let their absence go unmentioned. Just the opposite in fact; he hit the stage running with a cover of “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” as images of the city flashed on the enormous screen behind him (video here). That naturally segued into his own “Brooklyn (Go Hard),” the thematic appropriateness of the transition compensating for the fact that we were in fact not in Brooklyn, nor New York state at all technically. The crowd went hard regardless.

The Jigga man slammed at breakneck pace through a wide range of tracks, from new single “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)” (already featured on his merch) to old-school material like “Can I Live,” played in honor of Michael Jackson after a prelude of a bit of “I Want You Back.” A man with quite a few hits, he managed to play just about all of them at such rapid-fire pace he avoided the nostalgia feel, ripping from “99 Problems” to “Big Pimpin’” to “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” so professionally in the encore it never seemed obligatory.

All the credit cannot go to Jay however. His ace ten-piece backing band rendered the onstage DJ all but irrelevant, hitting every bump and grind in the beats to let Jay’s delivery flow naturally of its own accord. They dropped loud Linkin Park riffs for closing “Encore” and funky keyboard swirls for “Big Pimpin’,” but stepped back when necessary, such as when Jay premiered an impromptu a cappella verse off his upcoming Blueprint 3. Admittedly, most of the crowd probably didn’t care as much as he thought we did about that hard-to-hear teaser, but after two decades at the top of the game Jay-Z has earned the right to be cocky about his appeal. Confidence needn't lead to complacency though, and Jay played a man with something to prove. What? Perhaps he was proving simply that he has nothing left to prove.